Popular quotes about Women! Wisdom and inspiration are here! | page 35
Marjan. I have told him tales of good women and bad women, strong women and weak women, shy women and bold women, clever women and stupid women, honest women and women who betray. I'm hoping that, by living inside their skins while he hears their stories, he'll understand over time that women are not all this way or that way. I'm hoping he'll look at women as he does at men-that you must judge each of us on her own merits, and not condemn us or exalt us only because we belong to a particular sex.
Susan FletcherMany women, particularly young women, have claimed the right to use the most explicit sex terms, including extremely vulgar ones, in public as well as private. But it is men, far more than women, who have been liberated by this change. For now that women use these terms, men no longer need to watch their own language in the presence of women. But is this a gain for women?
Margaret MeadI know there are certain men that hate women or don't like women, and in order to make women feel small, they tend to isolate them when they bully them. And women are often humiliated by it and feel they can't do anything about it. So my advice to women would be: there's always support around for those sorts of things and if you feel you're isolated in any way, or being bullied, you must talk to someone about it.
Jo BrandI've always loved strong women, which is lucky for me because once you're over about twenty-five there is no other kind. Women blow my mind. The stuff that routinely gets done to them would make most men curl up and die, but women turn to steel and keep on coming. Any man who claims he's not into strong women is fooling himself mindless; he's into strong women who know how to pout prettily and put on baby voices, and who will end up keeping his balls in her makeup bags.
Tana FrenchIt just struck me as really odd that there were all of these conversations going on about what young women were up to. Were young women having too much sex? Were young women politically apathetic? Are young women socially engaged or not? And whenever these conversations were happening, they were mostly happening by older women and by older feminists. And maybe there would be a younger woman quoted every once in a while, but we weren't really a central part of that conversation. We weren't really being allowed to speak on our own behalf.
Jessica ValentiIf you look at most womens writing, women writers will describe women differently from the way male writers describe women. The details that go into a woman writers description of a female character are, perhaps, a little more judgmental. Theyre looking for certain things, because they know what women do to look a certain way.
Lorrie MooreI'm very much for helping create women who are going to be successful women. I don't like women who imitate men, who want to emasculate men. I think women should be feminine. That does not mean a 'air-brain' or someone who is not strong. I think real strength is strength of character, not the ability to push everyone around.
June Dally-WatkinsI feel that the thing about film and particularly about TV, actually, is it's being created now. We're living in the best time so far because there are many more women writing and women directing, women producing, and people are finally catching on to the fact that women want to go and buy tickets to see female characters and more than one in a film. So I actually think it's a very fertile time to be a woman over 40.
Cynthia NixonWomen lead in ways different from men's. Men, I think, have been programmed to give orders. Women have been programmed to motivate people, to educate them, to bring out the best in them. Ours is a less authoritarian leadership. I think women tend to play hardball less often. This is the trend of office politics anyway: the days of warring factions are over. We're talking now in terms of cooperation, and I think that is the game women play best.
Muriel FoxWomen are an enslaved population - the crop we harvest is children, the fields we work are houses. Women are forced into committing sexual acts with men that violate integrity because the universal religion - contempt for women - has as its first commandment that women exist purely as sexual fodder for men.
Andrea DworkinIt is understandable that the perspectives of men and women on safety are so different - men and women live in different worlds. [...] At core, men are afraid women will laugh at them, while at core, women are afraid men will kill them.
Gavin de BeckerMargaret Atwood, the Canadian novelist, once asked a group of women at a university why they felt threatened by men. The women said they were afraid of being beaten, raped, or killed by men. She then asked a group of men why they felt threatened by women. They said they were afraid women would laugh at them.
Molly IvinsTo me, there's two definitions of feminism. One is that you believe that women are equal human beings; that's not really a philosophy, it's just obvious. And the other is that you're actually fighting for women: you're promoting women and working towards the betterment of women.
Stephen MarchePeople ask me almost every day, "Why? You are successful, you have kids, you have grandchildren, so why?" Feminist women are seen as unsatisfied. But all women in the world, if they are well aware of inequality, are unsatisfied women. They don't have the same rights as men, and there is no freedom until there is equality between men and women.
Maria Teresa HortaYou can point to a lot of women showrunners that have had long and successful careers. In terms of the kinds of movies that women can get made, as long as the business operates under this model of the first-weekend [box office] focus, with huge movies aimed at super-young audiences, it will be really tough for women to do something that really changes the landscape. Because honestly, until they figure out how to get grown women into the theaters on the first weekend, it won't change.
Callie KhouriSince the 1950s (until the early 1990s), girls in Kabul and other cities attended schools. Half of university students were women, and women made up 40 percent of Afghanistanโs doctors, 70 percent of its teachers and 30 percent of its civil servants. A small number of women even held important political posts as members of Parliament and judges. Most women did not wear the burqa.
Eleanor SmealWe need more female directors, we also need men to step up and identify with female characters and stories about women. We don't want to create a ghetto where women have to do movies about women. To assume stories about women need to be told by a woman isn't necessarily true, just as stories about men don't need a male director.
Geena DavisI think that all women should consider running for office. What's happening now is just horrifying. With the people we have - with the person we have in the president's office, with so many of the people we have in Congress - we need more progressive women in office. At all levels. From city councils on up. We need women to run. I encourage women to run
Chirlane McCrayAll year there have been these cover stories that the women's movement is dead and about the death of feminism and the post-feminist generation of young women who don't identify with feminism - and then we have the biggest march ever of women in Washington. More people than had ever marched for anything - not only more women, but more people.
Betty FriedanIf you go off into general-interest magazines, often women are being shoved aside into various ghettos that perpetuate the problem. Women's interests are specialized, they're secondary; they're somewhere over to the side of the serious work that's being done. Throughout history, there have been ladies' magazines, ladies' journals, and for years there have been women writers who would refuse to participate in women-only sort projects because of that stigma.
Erin BelieuAlthough I haven't experienced violence in a relationship, I know that two women every week in England and Wales are killed by their partner or ex-partner, and that unless we act now, many more women will die because of domestic violence. We must speak out now against all forms of domestic violence, not only physical abuse but also the emotional, sexual and financial abuse which means that many women are afraid to be at home with their partner.
Jemma KiddWhether outside work is done by choice or not, whether women seek their identity through work, whether women are searching for pleasure or survival through work, the integration of motherhood and the world of work is a source of ambivalence, struggle, and conflict for the great majority of women.
Sara Lawrence-LightfootWhen we talk about feminism - equality without apology for ALL - we can't be talking about for all white women or all highly educated women but all women, regardless of color, class, creed, sexual orientation or identity.
Christine PelosiThere is not a revolution that succe Women were everywhere in the revolution. Women participated in it, and many women were killed.
Nawal El SaadawiWhat we are learning around the world is that if women are healthy and educated, their families will flourish. If women are free from violence, their families will flourish. If women have a chance to work and earn as full and equal partners in society, their families will flourish. And when families flourish, communities and nations do as well.
Hillary ClintonA yet women -good women- frightened me because they eventually wanted your soul, and what was left of mine, I wanted to keep. Basically I craved prostitutes, base women, because they were deadly and hard and made no personal demands. Nothing was lost when they left. Yet at the same time I yearned for a gentle, good woman, despite the overwhelming price.
Charles BukowskiI really don't see any men sitting in the corner office plotting to keep women out. All the men I know are actively trying to promote women, to get more women involved. These men have wives they care about; they have daughters they desperately care about. So I don't think it's fair to blame men - or I don't think it's accurate to blame men anymore.
Debora SparI read a lot of studies about the fact that there is a bias in the way health care is doled out, down to the fact that most medical studies are done on men, not women, so most dosages are planned for men, not women, and on and on. And more than that, women's pain is gauged differently and their complaints are received differently. And the idea that there's a place where you can go where everything is geared toward you, as a woman, is great. But it's a shame that we need to find places that are "safe" when the world, the whole world, should be a safe place.
Shonda RhimesThe bonding of women that is woman-loving, or Gyn/affection, is very different from male bonding. Male bonding has been the glue of male dominance. It has been based upon recognition of the difference men see between themselves and women, and is a form of the behaviour, masculinity, that creates and maintains male powerโฆ Male comradeship/bonding depends upon energy drained from women.
Sheila JeffreysWe're not going to fix the sexual harassment epidemic unless we can acknowledge that this is not a women's issue, this is a man's issue. The burden should not be on the shoulders of women only to solve this, because we can't do it alone and it's not fair. We're seeing now the tsunami of all these women coming forward, which is such a blessing. But the tipping point will be when men in the workplace decide to be our allies.
Gretchen CarlsonI was a threat to a lot of women and to a lot of men. The women cannot forgive me if I remain single and also have a family. But I have a family as well and am raising them. A lot of women only stay in their marriages because of the children so seeing me on my own annoys them.
Buchi EmechetaIf white American feminist theory need not deal with the differences between us, and the resulting difference in our oppressions, then how do you deal with the fact that the women who clean your houses and tend your children while you attend conferences on feminist theory are, for the most part, poor women and women of Color? What is the theory behind racist feminism?
Audre LordeThese are the folk who may pass into the kingdom of heaven: the grief-stricken, lovers, scholars of a certain obsessive disposition. Brute beasts. Women who have become as men and men who have become as women. Writers of books with long titles. Only those knights who have failed to touch the Grail. Industrious women. You, and I, and a boy named Oleg, and a girl with blue hair.
Catherynne M. ValenteThe desirable virgin is sexy but not sexual. She's young, white, and skinny. She's a cheerleader, a babysitter; she's accessible and eager to please (remember those ethics of passivity!). She's never a woman of color. SHe's never a low-income girl or a fat girl. She's never disabled. "Virgin" is a designation for those who meet a certain standard of what women, especially young women, are supposed to look like. As for how these young women are supposed to act? A blank slate is best.
Jessica ValentiIf you're creating a slave situation, you would almost never bring women. And if we look at Slavery for example, we look at the Greeks and the Romans, right? It was always men. They never brought any women. Because women carry the seeds of the revolution, right? And if you have the men by themselves, then you can do what the French did with the Blackfeet, which is breed them out.
Nikki GiovanniEconomic equity is an enormous empowerment of women. Having jobs that provide income means that women can be a more effective force, a more equal force, in the political process. Women with income take themselves more seriously and they are taken more seriously.
Betty FriedanI think at the end of the day this movie is respecting what we as women go through as we grow up. The experiences, what we deal with, other women, things about images, things that we deal with as women. This movie addresses that in a very appropriate and sincere way.
Amber TamblynThere are now more Millennial women with college degrees than Millennial men. I said to the audience, "Folks, you gotta stop looking at this men-versus-women thing as a 'versus,' as a comparison, as a getting even." That's not a good bit of news. I'm a chauvinist. How could I dare think that it's a bad thing that more Millennial women have college degrees? And there are answers to it but I'm not prepared to give 'em yet.
Rush LimbaughCountry music has been empowering to women. Women invented it - it was women singing to their children that built country music. The people making country music today might not even know that it all started with a midwife. But it's true, it really did. That's where Michael learned to shake it the way he did. It wasn't from old Papa Jackson, I'll tell you that.
Ketch SecorSure they say we (women) are life givers not takers, but guess what, most women can multi-task and be life givers and fighters. Boxing is not a life-taking sport. Boxing is not a violent sport; it's an art, a dance, a science. Sometimes the smarter boxer wins and sometimes the stronger boxer wins. Of course aggression is a feminine quality. It's a quality that exists in human beings whether they are men or women.
Sonya LamonakisNo longer should women be denied the right to vote, no longer should women be treated as second class citizens, no longer should women not be allowed to be a citizen at all.
Ginny Brown-WaiteAn ethic of maternalism was central to the utopianism of 19th century feminists. I don't think that today's women see motherhood as a source of personal power, let alone political power. I don't think that women now have that same sense that their lives as mothers gives them any special power or virtue. I think women see their lives as mothers as an adjunct to their working lives - a fulfilling and important adjunct, to be sure - but something they do in addition to working in the public realm, not because being a wife and mother gives them a distinct edge in improving the world as we know it.
Clare WrightWomen not only get violated, but then we take on the struggle to end it too... As a man, how could the destruction of women be anything to you but devastating? Think about the fact that the women being hurt are your mothers, daughters, sisters.
Eve EnslerWe have to help decision makers realize that women's reproductive health rights are civil rights and that women need to be free to make the same decisions that men are free to make with regard to health care and whether and when to have a family. It's going to be increasingly important for women to speak up not only about being able to make our own decisions, but also about the importance of being trusted to make our own decisions.
Maggie HassanI started a writing class, not in service of writing a script or writing anything specific. I've just really been enjoying that, and oddly the group, not by design, but it just happened to be all women, and there were three women who gave birth this fall while we were all in class, and there's just something really great about getting to know these women through their stories and what they're writing about.
Rosemarie DeWittOur world has created a false unrealistic image of what women are supposed to look like and act like. But the truth is that every woman was not created by God to be skinny, with a flawless complexion and long flowing hair. Not every woman was intended to juggle a career as well as all of the other duties of being a wife, mother, citizen, and daughter. Single women should not be made to feel they are missing somenthing because they are not married. Married women should not be made to feel they must have a career to be complete. We must have the freedom to be our individual selves.
Joyce MeyerI think that a lot of women get out of the business because it's so not family-friendly. And so women that could be in there making good women-roles don't do it, 'cause they're smart and get out. But I think there is a consequence to that. I think us gals need to stay in and just change the way it works, so men aren't being workaholics and avoiding life and relationships, and they can make films in a reasonable amount of time, so you can have a family and a life outside of work. And have more balanced, content-driven, enjoyable movies.
Joan CusackWhat all this tells me is that a large proportion of the people in positions of power across Australia - politicians and media pundits included - just don't consider the beating down of women to be of any consequence. Half the time they won't even acknowledge it, let alone take a stand against it, preferring instead to gaslight women and pretend it's all in their head. Are these the kinds of people we want making decisions for us? The ones who think mockery about women's genitals is bad when it targets no one in particular, but OK when it targets the Prime Minister?
Clementine Ford