Gloria Steinem Quotes

Women have two choices: Either she's a feminist or a masochist.

I have always employed humor, and I think it's absolutely crucial that we do because, among other things, humor is the only free emotion.

It was just that prejudiced people linked together things they didn't like.

Liberation does not come from outside.

Pornography is about dominance. Erotica is about mutuality.

Our children are the only people on whom we can safely take revenge for what was done to us.

After all, hope is a form of planning.

Burnout is a way of telling you that your form of activism was perhaps not very full circle.

I always trust the microcosm over the macrocosm.

I think if we could raise one generation of kids without violence and shaming, we don't know what might be possible.

that conflict follows politics as night follows day,

A movement happens when people are inspired by somebody, but they do it themselves. You don't wait for someone else. You do it yourself.

If we're isolated, we come to feel powerless when we're not.

Women can be vivacious. We are allowed more varieties of facial expression and gestures. Men must be rocklike.

From pacifist to terrorist, each person condemns violence - and then adds one cherished case in which it may be justified.

Law and justice are not always the same. When they aren't, destroying the law may be the first step toward changing it.

We've begun to raise daughters more like sons ... but few have the courage to raise our sons more like our daughters.

If what's inside your dreams wasn't already real inside you, you couldn't even dream it.

Whatever you want to do,do it now.

If the shoe doesn't fit, must we change the foot?

Logic is in the eye of the logician.

This is what forty looks like. We've been lying so long, who would know?

The first step toward speaking for others is speaking for ourselves.

Between what is and what could be?

Obviously, no LGBT person should be denied the ability to be who they are because their boss disagrees.

Each individual woman's body demands to be accepted on its own terms.

Writers are notorious for using any reason to keep from working: over-researching, retyping, going to meetings, waxing the floors - anything.

Thank you for all your good and beautiful work.

One's enemies are always talking about 'post-feminism.' It is a word invented by people who would like to do away with feminism.

The Constitution did not mention women when it was first written, and it still doesn't.

I keep thinking: 'Georgia O'Keeffe wouldn't have had Botox.'

Maybe U.S. policy makers should talk to taxi drivers.

A bad facelift is like a bad toupee.

When you're dependent, it's very hard not to be worried about the approval of whoever and whatever you're dependent on. For

I always thought that "humanist" was a good word long before I understood that anyone thought it was a bad word.

YOU CANNOT THINK YOURSELF INTO RIGHT LIVING. YOU LIVE YOURSELF INTO RIGHT THINKING. - Native Elders

If you travel long enough, every story becomes a novel.

to making revolution, not just dinner.

Marriage works best for men than women. The two happiest groups are married men and unmarried women.

Overthrowing capitalism is too small for us. We must overthrow the whole ... patriarch!

The definition of woman's work is shitwork.

It's a big gift to be recognizable as part of something that matters to people, but that's not the same as being responsible for something.

I think one of the great innovations of sexual harassment law was that it did not use the word "consent." It used the word "welcome."

God may be in the details, but the goddess is in the questions. Once we begin to ask them, there's no turning back.

But controversy is a teacher.

human beings have an almost infinite capacity for adapting to the expectations around

Our grief is not a cry for war.

Anger is supposed to be "unfeminine," so we suppress

Inside, each of us has a purple motorcycle.

Romance is a means to the end of self-completion, but love is an end in itself.

I am not now, and never have been, a girlfriend of Henry Kissinger.

A lot of my generation are living out the un-lived lives of our mothers.

read Plato or Shakespeare or Dante as if we found their books in the street and had no idea who they were. I

The new women in politics seem to be saying that we already know how to lose, thank you very much. Now we want to learn how to win.

This was my first hint of the truism that depression is anger turned inward; thus women are twice as likely to be depressed.

A good friendship is a conversation that never ends.

The first problem for all of us, men and women, is not to learn but to unlearn.

People in the same room understand and empathize with each other in a way that isn't possible on the page or screen.

The question of whether one has one's own political power or goes to work for someone else is not only a feminist question.

God knows (She knows) that women try.

After feminism, I suddenly realised: not everyone has to live the same way. Imagine that!

In every century, there are a handful of writers who help the human race to evolve. Andrea is one of them.

In Indian Country," he says, "we have a different sense of time. I'm learning and you're learning - and more will.

I don't know enough to be a feminist." Or even "I'm not smart enough to be a feminist." It breaks my heart.

I don't want to die saying but, you know? There's so much I want to do, so I want more time.

We learn most where we know the least.

The authority of any governing institution must stop at its citizen's skin.

I haven't been in a job situation in which I was competing with other women. As a writer, you're more likely to be treated as an individual.

There is a naive belief that injustice only had to be pointed out in order to be cured.

When men realize that feminism is a universal good that affects them in very intimate ways then I think they really become allies and leaders.

You are the leader you've been waiting for.

In order to make a choice, you need the power to see there is one.

There is no such thing as Superwoman. You cant have everything if you do everything.

I'm lucky I don't make my living in front of the camera.

Fashion in the past meant conforming and losing oneself. Fashion in the present means being individual and finding oneself.

We need to unlearn some of our respect for education, since it has undermined our respect for ourselves.

For twenty years, not a week went by when I wasn't on a plane.

A rejection of the way a woman speaks is often a way of blaming or dismissing her without dealing with the content of what she is saying.

Housewives are dependent creatures who are still children ... parasites.

Men tend to gain wholeness by acquiring the qualities that are wrongly called feminine.

Most women are one man away from welfare.

Laughter is the only free emotion-the only one that can't be compelled.p.181

It's possible to be pro-sex and anti-pornography.

Perhaps the most revolutionary act for a woman will be a self-willed journey - and to be welcomed when she comes home.

I began to understand with a terrible sureness that we teach what we need to learn and write what we need to know.

Marriage was always the happening end, not the beginning.

When unique voices are united in a common cause, they make history.

The electoral system is not where change starts - it usually starts in communities and from the bottom up - but it is where change can be stopped.

Imagining anything is the first step toward creating it. Believing in a true self is what allows a true self to be born.

Anything can be used for or against the welfare of women - or the welfare of anyone - depending on who controls it.

Knowing About Victoria Woodhull inspires women to be daring, outrageous and creative.

The problem for all women is we're identified by how we look instead of by our heads and our hearts.

Elephants are so wise and so funny and so endangered and so intelligent. I just think there is a lot to learn from them.

As with all inferior things, this part of the city was given an adjective while the rest stole the noun.

If you let Barnum & Bailey interpret a plot by Stendahl, it might come out to be something like the 1972 Democratic convention.

Go out and find your own stories.That is what I want to tell you.

I always say to audiences of men: "Cooperation beats submission. Trust me."

I hope to live to 100. There is so much to do.

She was a civil rights advocate. He was a feminist.

I began to sense that a big part of our problem is simple ignorance of what the oldest cultures have to teach.