Gloria Steinem Quotes:

The purpose of feminism is to free the uniqueness of the individual and to understand that inside each of us is a unique human being who is a combination of heredity and environment.

source: - Source: bigthink.com

Topics: Unique, Feminism, Purpose, Heredity, Blank Slates

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

Topics: Daughter, Courage, Honesty, Mom And Daughter, Son And Daughter

I never quite trust futurists because I think they're kind of telling us what they think our future should be.

Topics: Thinking, Never Quit, Kind, Futurist

Without leaps of imagination, or dreaming, we lose the excitement of possibilities. Dreaming, after all, is a form of planning.

source: - "Why the Internet Is Full of Feminist Quotes Falsely Attributed to Gloria Steinem" by Ruth Graham, www.slate.com. October 05, 2017.

Topics: Inspirational, Life, Motivational, Poor Planning, Lost Dreams

Whatever each individual woman is facing; only she knows her biggest challenge. However, if we add up the problems that affect the biggest numbers of women, then issues having to do with physical safety and reproduction are still the biggest. Female bodies are still the battleground, whether that means restricting freedom, birth control and safe abortion in order to turn them into factories, or abandoning female infants because females are less valuable for everything other than reproduction.

Topics: Mean, Order, Numbers, Reproduction, Female Body

Far too many people are looking for the right person, instead of trying to be the right person.

Topics: Inspirational, Leadership, Fun, Happy Relationship, Right Person

I guess 35 years ago, I thought we had more of a democracy than we actually do. Majority support doesn't help unless the majority is active and votes - but the opposition minority votes a much greater proportion, so we often lose by a narrow margin.

Topics: Years, Support, Democracy

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

Topics: Law, Justice, Steps, Law And Justice, Liberated Woman

I think we all have the power to name ourselves. I try to call people what it is they wish to be called. But we can take the sting out of epithets and bad words by using them.

Topics: Thinking, Names, People, Epithet

The art of life is not controlling what happens to us, but using what happens to us

source: - Gloria Steinem (2012). “Revolution from Within: A Book of Self-Esteem”, p.27, Open Road Media

Topics: Art, Life Is

Controlling women as the means of reproduction is made even more necessary by any race or caste or class system. It just comes together, it's just like life. And therefore it's not even practical to be a feminist without being anti-racist or against classism. It just doesn't work.

Topics: Mean, Race, Class, Reproduction, Class System

I want to say to you that there is life and dreams and surprises after 30-and 40, and 50, and 60, and 77! Believe me, life is one long surprise.

Topics: Dream, Believe, Long

There were never that many women stand-up comics in the past because the power to make people laugh is also a power that gets people upset.

Topics: Past, People, Laughing

Dreaming, after all, is a form of planning.

Topics: Positive, Dream, Planning

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.

Topics: Thinking, Emotion, Employed, Love Actually

A liberated woman is one who has sex before marriage and a job after.

Topics: Jobs, Sex, Feminism, Liberated, Liberated Woman

I think laughter is crucial. Some of the original cultures, like the Dalit and the Native American, don't separate laughter and seriousness.

Topics: Laughter, Native American, Thinking

A feminist is anyone who recognizes the equality and full humanity of women and men.

source: - "Happy 80th, Gloria Steinem" by Kathleen McCartney, www.cnn.com. March 25, 2014.

Topics: Women, Feminist, Humanity, Women Equality, Inspirational Feminist

Women well understood how to restrict birth through timing of sexual intercourse, herbs and abortifacients. I suspect the focus on men's control of women as the means of reproduction came later, in the last five percent or so of human history, with the idea of children as property and labor. One needed to have as many as possible, never mind about women's health or mobility or brainpower. Women's freedom was restricted in order to make sure of the paternity and ownership of children.

Topics: Children, Mean, Men, Reproduction, Women's Health

I do not like to write - I like to have written.

Topics: Writing, Creative Writing

Reporters immediately push their interviewees into the most extreme version by saying in a shocked tone, 'Well, are you saying that ..." They're trying to make people be as hostile and opposed to each other as possible because they think only conflict is news.

Topics: Thinking, People, Trying

Most women are one man away from welfare.

Topics: Men, Feminist, Feminism

America is an enormous frosted cupcake in the middle of millions of starving people.

Topics: America, Cupcakes, People

Rich People plan for three generations Poor people plan for Saturday night

Topics: Inspirational, Success, Night, Three Generations

Whenever one person stands up and says, “Wait a minute, this is wrong,” it helps other people do the same.

Topics: Helping Others, People, Waiting

I just think that culturally, women - we're all human beings - but at least we don't have our masculinity to prove.

Topics: Thinking, Masculinity, Prove

At my graduation, I thought we had to marry what we wished to become. Now you are becoming the men you once would have wished to marry.

Topics: Men, Becoming, He Man

Why are solutions not just as newsworthy as problems? The notion that hostility is necessary all the time to create interest and news is not going to help us [humanity] come to agreements and solve the huge problems we have.

Topics: Agreement, Humanity, News, Newsworthy

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

Topics: Race, Feminism, Helping, Radical Feminism, Andrea

The premise of most media is that only conflict is newsworthy. And that's just not true. I think for a lot of men, too - certainly for most women - there's enough real conflict without manufacturing it. The media formula is always to have a pro and con, to say there are two sides to any issue, when in fact there may be ten sides.

Topics: Real, Men, Thinking, Pros And Cons, Newsworthy

Writing keeps me from believing everything I read.

Topics: Believe, Writing

The problem is, for men and women, the idea that sexuality is about dominance and submission, when, in fact, cooperation is a lot more fun, to put it my way. So some of it, a lot of it, is just about empathy.

Topics: Fun, Men, Ideas

Clinging to the past is the problem. Embracing change is the answer.

Topics: Past, Answers, Problem, Embrace Change

If we were going to address what involves the biggest number of women, reproductive freedom is a fundamental human right - like freedom of speech, the most basic right. Freedom from violence, since women worldwide are still like 70% at least of all victims of violence. Equality in the family, democracy in the family, since the family is the microcosm of everything else, so if you have inequality and violence in the family, it normalizes it in the street, for foreign policy, for every place else.

Topics: Numbers, Freedom Of Speech, Democracy

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

Topics: Superwoman, Super Woman

Probably those three things affect the most people: reproductive freedom, freedom from violence, and democratic families. But there may well be someone sitting at this table who has a great idea to do something else that wouldn't come under those umbrellas and that would really be great, and make all kinds of change.

Topics: Ideas, People, Three

Women have always been an equal part of the past. We just havent been a part of history.

Topics: Past, Equal

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

Topics: Long, Humanist, Bad Word

The whole idea is not to figure out what you should do that will matter, but to make each thing you do reflect the values you want, because we don't know what's going to matter in the future

Topics: Ideas, Want, Matter

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.

Topics: Men, Thinking, Leader

The art of being helpful is behaving as if everything we do matters - because we never know which things might.

Topics: Art, Might, Matter

I'm more often confronted by women who come from religious traditions and don't feel that they have a place in the feminist movement. I've felt pressure when reporters asked me, "Do you believe in God?" I do say, "No. I believe in people."

Topics: Religious, Believe, People, Religious Traditions, Feminist Movement

We're changing ourselves to fit the world instead of changing the world to fit women.

Topics: World, Changing The World, Fit

People are quite clear in viewing nuns as the servants and the teachers and the supporters of the poor. You contrast that with the fact that the Vatican did virtually nothing about long-known pedophiles, and it's just too much.

Topics: Teacher, Long, People

A woman reading Playboy feels a little like a Jew reading a Nazi manual.

Topics: Reading, Feminist, Feminism, Playboy Bunnies

I've only ever met one woman who actually was a prostitute of her own free will. She didn't have a pimp. She could pick and choose her customers. That's so rare.

Topics: Pimp, Free Will, Mets

It is more rewarding to watch money change the world than watch it accumulate.

Topics: Money, Giving, Watches, Fundraising For Charity

Inside each of us is a unique person resulting from millennia of environment and heredity combined in a way that could never happen again and could never have happened before. We aren't blank slates, but we are also communal creatures who are born before our brains are fully developed, so we're very sensitive to our environment. The question is: How to find the support and the circumstances that allow you to express what's inside you?

Topics: Unique, Support, Brain

Nothing will happen automatically. Change depends on what you and I do every day.

source: - "Celebrating Gloria Steinem’s 80th Birthday" by Marianne Schnall, www.huffingtonpost.com. March 24, 2014.

Topics: Change, Happens, Depends

A woman without a man is like a fish without a bicycle.

source: - Attributed

Topics: Hilarious, Heartbreak, Funny Love, Inspirational Feminist, Men Women

Sex and race, because they are easy and visible differences, have been the primary ways of organizing human beings into superior and inferior groups and into the cheap labour on which this system still depends.

Topics: Sex, Race, Differences, Women's Education, Women's Rights

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

source: - "Gloria Steinem's message to girls around the world", www.cnn.com. June 10, 2013.

Topics: Unique, Voice, Causes, Unique Voices

You are the leader you've been waiting for.

Topics: Leader, Waiting

Women are not going to be equal outside the home until men are equal in it.

Topics: Home, Men, Feminist, Battered Women, Equal Power

One day an army of gray-haired women may quietly take over the Earth!

source: - Gloria Steinem (2017). “Passion, Politics, and Everyday Activism: Collected Essays: Moving Beyond Words; Outrageous Acts and Everyday Rebellions; and Revolution from Within”, p.893, Open Road Media

Topics: Army, One Day, Earth

I wouldn't want to generalize, but we still do live in a society that's sexist and racist and addicted to class and has the ridiculous idea that if you have money you're smarter, which Donald Trump by himself should be able to disprove.

source: - Source: www.elle.com

Topics: Class, Ideas, Racist

At my age, in this still hierarchical time, people often ask me if I’m “passing the torch.” I explain that I’m keeping my torch, thank you very much-and I’m using it to light the torches of others.

Topics: Light, People, Age

It's the biggest economic influence in a woman's life whether she can decide when and whether to have children or not.

source: - Big Think Interview, bigthink.com.

Topics: Children, Influence, Economic

The story of women's struggle for equality belongs to no single feminist nor to any one organization but to the collective efforts of all who care about human rights

Topics: Women, Struggle, Rights, Collective Effort

Because when some people are invisible, everyone suffers.

Topics: People, Suffering, Invisible

Empathy is the most radical of human emotions.

Topics: Empathy, Mind, Body

By the year 2000 we will, I hope, raise our children to believe in human potential, not God.

Topics: Children, Believe, Years, Human Potential, Radical Feminist

Women may be the one group that grows more radical with age.

source: - Gloria Steinem (2012). “Outrageous Acts and Everyday Rebellions”, p.326, Open Road Media

Topics: Women, Feminist, Feminism, Aging Process

The origins of violence against women by men are not biological. If that were the case, it would exist in every culture. And it doesn't exist in every culture.

source: - Source: www.pbs.org

Topics: Men, Culture, Violence

Behave like everything you do matters.

Topics: Matter, Behave

Helping begins with listening.

Topics: Listening, Helping

Whatever you want to do,do it now.

source: - Gloria Steinem's Commencement Address at Tufts University in Medford, Massachusetts, awpc.cattcenter.iastate.edu. May 17, 1987.

Topics: Want

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

Topics: Two, Choices, Feminist, Inspirational Feminist

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

Topics: Inspirational, Change, Inspiring, Inspirational Feminist, Strong Female

When I'm talking to people, I find myself quoting the three organizing rules of Black Lives Matter. Black Lives Matter was initiated by three young women, and too few people know that. But, anyway, the first one is lead with love. The second is low ego, high impact. The third is move with the speed of trust. I must say those make me feel very hopeful for the future.

source: - Source: www.elle.com

Topics: Moving, Talking, Impact, Black Lives, Black Lives Matter

A good friendship is a conversation that never ends.

Topics: Friendship, Good Friend, Conversation, Good Friendship

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

Topics: Healing, Order, Choices

The future depends entirely on what each of us does every day; a movement is only people moving.

source: - "23 Ways Gloria Steinem Taught Us To Be Better Women" by Alanna Vagianos, www.huffingtonpost.com. March 25, 2014.

Topics: Moving On, People, Feminist

Some of us are becoming the men we wanted to marry.

source: - Speech at Yale University, New Haven, Conn., 23 Sept. 1981

Topics: Marriage, Witty, Work, Women Equality, Liberated Woman

We need to stop raising boys to think that they need to prove their masculinity by being controlling or by not showing emotion or by not being little girls.

source: - Source: www.pbs.org

Topics: Girl, Boys, Thinking, Masculinity

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

source: - Gloria Steinem (2017). “Passion, Politics, and Everyday Activism: Collected Essays: Moving Beyond Words; Outrageous Acts and Everyday Rebellions; and Revolution from Within”, p.882, Open Road Media

Topics: Change, Shoes, Feet, Starting Anew, Old Shoes

Intelligence without character is a dangerous thing.

Topics: Character, Dangerous, Dangerous Things

There are two types of people in the world, those who say 'there are two types of people in the world' and those who don't.

Topics: Business, Two, People

Inner space is the real frontier.

Topics: Real, Space, Frontiers

I was rescued by librarians. It was librarians who said 'maybe you would like to read The Hardy Boys as well as Nancy Drew.' It is true for me, as for so many countless others, that librarians saved my life, my internal life.

Topics: Boys, Librarian, Nancy, Nancy Drew

Power can be taken, but not given. The process of the taking is empowerment in itself.

source: - Gloria Steinem (2012). “Outrageous Acts and Everyday Rebellions”, p.577, Open Road Media

Topics: Strong Women, Taken, Power, Self Empowerment

Patriarchy requires violence or the subliminal threat of violence in order to maintain itself... The most dangerous situation for a woman is not an unknown man in the street, or even the enemy in wartime, but a husband or lover in the isolation of their home.

Topics: Husband, Home, Men, Dangerous Situations, Subliminal

Once we give up searching for approval we often find it easier to earn respect.

Topics: Giving Up, Approval, Easier, Earn Respect

No one can give us power. If we aren’t part of the process of taking it, we won’t be strong enough to use it.

Topics: Strong, Giving, Use

I want us to organize, to tell the personal stories that create empathy, which is the most revolutionary emotion.

Topics: Empathy, Stories, Want, Personal Stories

We need to raise our sons more like our daughters. We need to relieve them of this burden of the idea that to be masculine they have to be superior, which is what they get addicted to, and why both racism and sexism are crimes that I call superiority crimes.

source: - Source: www.elle.com

Topics: Daughter, Son, Ideas

Transformation happens in small groups. Each person can speak and all listen.

Topics: Healing, Groups, Transformation, Small Groups

What I think we need to do is infuse everyday and every action with the kind of values we hope will be in the future, with kindness, with nurturing, with dreams, ambition, using your talents, not resorting to violence, other forms of conflict resolution, with humor, with poetry, with music.

source: - Interview with Max Miller, bigthink.com. October 28, 2010.

Topics: Dream, Kindness, Ambition, Using Your Talents, Nurturing

If men menstruated, they would brag about how much and for how long.

Topics: Men, Long, Brag

Men, through no fault of theirs, get born into cultures that tell them that if a woman can do it, it's not worth doing, or if they're not superior to women in one way or another, they're not really masculine.

source: - Source: www.elle.com

Topics: Men, Culture, Way

If you can learn to like how you look, and not the way you think you look, it can set you free.

Topics: Thinking, Looks, Way

We choose to be writers because we don't want to talk.

source: - Source: collider.com

Topics: Want

We need to remember across generations that there is as much to learn as there is to teach.

Topics: Reality, Needs, Generations

Hope is a very unruly emotion.

source: - Gloria Steinem (2012). “Outrageous Acts and Everyday Rebellions”, p.182, Open Road Media

Topics: Inspirational, Hope, Badass, Unruly

learning must travel the distance from head to heart.

Topics: Distance, Heart

What would happen if we listened to children as much as we talked to them?

Topics: Children, Happens, Ifs

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

Topics: Dream, Real, Inspiration

Any woman who chooses to behave like a full human being should be warned that the armies of the status quo will treat her as something of a dirty joke. That's their natural and first weapon. She will need her sisterhood.

source: - Ms., Spring 1972

Topics: War, Dirty, Army, Challenging Status Quo, Challenging The Status Quo

when pain has been intertwined with love and closeness, it's very difficult to believe that love and closeness can be experienced without pain.

source: - Gloria Steinem (2012). “Revolution from Within: A Book of Self-Esteem”, p.99, Open Road Media

Topics: Pain, Believe, Abuse, Closeness

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

Topics: Feminist, Skins, Citizens

If we're by ourselves we come to feel crazy and alone. We need to make alternate families of small groups of women who support each other, talk to each other regularly, can speak their truths and their experiences and find they're not alone in them, that other women have them, too ... It makes such a huge difference.

source: - "Celebrating Gloria Steinem’s 80th Birthday" by Marianne Schnall, www.huffingtonpost.com. March 24, 2014.

Topics: Strong Women, Crazy, Differences, Small Groups

If you add up all the forms of genocide, from female infanticide and genital mutilation to so-called honor crimes, sex trafficking, and domestic abuse, everything, we lose about 6 million humans every year just because they were born female. That's a holocaust every year.

Topics: Sex, Years, Holocaust, Infanticide, Trafficking

Religion is often politics made sacred.

source: - Source: edition.cnn.com

Topics: Sacred, Made

Feminism has never been about getting a job for one woman. It's about making life more fair for women everywhere. It's not about a piece of the existing pie; there are too many of us for that. It's about baking a new pie.

source: - "Wrong woman, wrong message" by Gloria Steinem, articles.latimes.com. September 4, 2008.

Topics: Jobs, Pie, Feminism

But somewhere within each of us, buried at varying depths depending on the age and degree of neglect or abuse, shame or coercion we endured, there is a resistant, daydreaming, rebellious, creative, unique child -- a true self who is waiting.

source: - Gloria Steinem (2012). “Revolution from Within: A Book of Self-Esteem”, p.98, Open Road Media

Topics: Children, Unique, Self

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

source: - Gloria Steinem (2012). “Revolution from Within: A Book of Self-Esteem”, p.190, Open Road Media

Topics: Believe, Self, Creating

There is always one true inner voice. Trust it.

source: - Gloria Steinem (2012). “Revolution from Within: A Book of Self-Esteem”, p.398, Open Road Media

Topics: Truth, Voice, Inner Voice

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

Topics: Men, Two, Funny Marriage, Unmarried

I believe a unique core self is born into every human being; the result of millennia of environment and heredity combined in an unpredictable way that could never happen before or again.

Topics: Believe, Unique, Self, Heredity

I'm completely happy not having children. I mean, everybody does not have to live in the same way. And as somebody said, "Everybody with a womb doesn't have to have a child any more than everybody with vocal cords has to be an opera singer."

source: - "Biography / Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

Topics: Children, Mean, Way, Vocal Cords, Opera Singers

Battered women is a phrase that uncovered major, long-hidden violence. It helps us to face the fact that, statistically speaking, the most dangerous place for a woman is in her own home, not in the streets.

source: - Gloria Steinem (1986). “Outrageous acts and everyday rebellions”, New Amer Library

Topics: Home, Long, Faces, Dangerous Places, Battered Women

In short, pornography is not about sex. It's about an imbalance of male-female power that allows and even requires sex to be used as a form of aggression. ... But until we finally untangle sexuality and aggression, there will be more pornography and less erotica. There will be little murders in our beds - and very little love.

Topics: Sex, Littles, Imbalance, Male Female, Female Power

People waste more time waiting for someone to take charge of their lives than they do in any other pursuit.

Topics: Work, People, Waiting

The U.S. has more guns per capita and supplies more guns to the world than any other country. What would be a fistfight without guns turns into dead bodies with them. Families with guns in the house are more likely to shoot themselves accidentally than to shoot any intruder. Women abused by their partners have a five-fold increased risk of being killed when their partner owns a gun. Every three hours, at least one child is wounded or killed by gunfire.

Topics: Country, Children, Gun, Supplies

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

source: - Gloria Steinem (2012). “Outrageous Acts and Everyday Rebellions”, p.538, Open Road Media

Topics: Order, Belief, Injustice

The voting booth is the only place that a pauper equals a billionaire, and any woman equals any man.

source: - Source: www.huffingtonpost.com

Topics: Men, Voting, Billionaire

If we keep on talking about masculine and feminine and following those stereotypes, then we will make women suppress and despise their so called masculine qualities and men suppress and despise their so called feminine ones, and that's where all the trouble starts.

source: - Source: www.pbs.org

Topics: Men, Talking, Masculine And Feminine

Self-hatred leads to the need either to dominate or to be dominated.

source: - Gloria Steinem (2012). “Revolution from Within: A Book of Self-Esteem”, p.14, Open Road Media

Topics: Self, Hatred, Needs, Self Hatred

How ever sugarcoated and ambiguous, every form of authoritarianism must start with a belief in some group's greater right to power, whether that right is justified by sex, race, religion or all four.

source: - Gloria Steinem (1986). “Outrageous acts and everyday rebellions”, New Amer Library

Topics: Sex, Race, Liberty, Authoritarianism, Great Libertarian

If women are supposed to be less rational and more emotional at the beginning of our menstrual cycle when the female hormone is at its lowest level, then why isn't it logical to say that, in those few days, women behave the most like the way men behave all month long?

source: - Gloria Steinem (2012). “Outrageous Acts and Everyday Rebellions”, p.555, Open Road Media

Topics: Men, Emotional, Long

A pedestal is as much a prison as any small, confined space.

Topics: Women, Space, Pedestal

I have me brave women who are exploring the outer edge of human possibility, with no history to guide them, and with a courage to make themselves vulnerable that I find moving beyond words.

source: - Gloria Steinem (2012). “Outrageous Acts and Everyday Rebellions”, p.190, Open Road Media

Topics: Courage, Moving, Brave, Moving Beyond, Brave Women

I've yet to be on a campus where most women weren't worrying about some aspect of combining marriage, children, and a career. I've yet to find one where many men were worrying about the same thing.

source: - Gloria Steinem (2017). “Passion, Politics, and Everyday Activism: Collected Essays: Moving Beyond Words; Outrageous Acts and Everyday Rebellions; and Revolution from Within”, p.887, Open Road Media

Topics: Children, Women, Careers, College Campus, I Am Woman

It's not that women are less corruptible than men are, it's that women have had less chance to become corrupt.

Topics: Men, Chance

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."

source: - Source: www.elle.com

Topics: Thinking, Law, Innovation, Harassment

We are still in various kinds of patriarchal systems. The very definition of patriarchy is that men control women as the means of reproduction, so the idea that a woman's main role is to have children often means society wants more workers, more soldiers. The idea that how many children we have should be controlled by the family, the church, the nation - by anyone but women themselves - is still very deep and very strong.

source: - Interview with Maria Shriver, www.interviewmagazine.com. July 11, 2011.

Topics: Strong, Children, Mean, Patriarchy

If you have two groups of people and you say one is inferior to the other, which is a lie, then the only way to maintain the lie is through violence or the threat of violence.

source: - Source: www.pbs.org

Topics: Lying, Two, People

What would happen if even one generation were raised with respect and without violence?

Topics: Generations, Violence, Raised

Language can't solve everything, of course, but it does carry our dreams and our ideas.

source: - Source: www.elle.com

Topics: Dream, Ideas, Doe

Women tend to be conservative in youth and get more radical as they get older because they lose power with age. So, if a young woman is not a feminist, I say, just wait.

Topics: Feminist, Waiting, Feminism

Most American children suffer too much mother and too little father.

source: - "A New Egalitarian Life Style". www.nytimes.com. August 26, 1971.

Topics: Mother, Children, Father, Mother And Father, Off The Wall

No wonder male religious leaders so often say that humans were born in sin—because we were born to female creatures. Only by obeying the rules of the patriarchy can we be reborn through men. No wonder priests and ministers in skirts sprinkle imitation birth fluid over our heads, give us new names, and promise rebirth into everlasting life.

Topics: Religious, Men, Names, Everlasting Life

I have yet to hear a man ask for advice on how to combine marriage and a career.

source: - Quoted in Robert Byrne, The Fourth - and by Far the Most Recent - 637 Best Things Anybody Ever Said (1990)

Topics: Funny, Marriage, Witty, Men Women, Careers Choices

No man can call himself liberal, or radical, or even a conservative advocate of fair play, if his work depends in any way on the unpaid or underpaid labor of women at home, or in the office.

source: - Gloria Steinem (2015). “My Life on the Road”, p.85, Oneworld Publications

Topics: Women, Home, Play, Fair Play, Underpaid

... patriarchy creates megapatterns that affect us all--even as we forge different individual choices within them--just as do themegapatterns of nationalism or racism.

Topics: Individual Choice, Racism, Choices, Patriarchy

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.

source: - Gloria Steinem (2012). “Outrageous Acts and Everyday Rebellions”, p.287, Open Road Media

Topics: Rejection, Way, Blame

So whatever you want to do, just do it... Making a damn fool of yourself is absolutely essential.

source: - Gloria Steinem's Commencement Address at Tufts University in Medford, Massachusetts, awpc.cattcenter.iastate.edu. May 17, 1987.

Topics: Essentials, Want, Fool, Making A Fool Of Yourself

I believe that transgender people, including those who have transitioned, are living out real, authentic lives. Those lives should be celebrated, not questioned. Their health care decisions should be theirs and theirs alone to make.

source: - Source: transadvocate.com

Topics: Real, Believe, People, Transgender, Authentic Life

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

source: - Gloria Steinem (2012). “Outrageous Acts and Everyday Rebellions”, p.293, Open Road Media

Topics: Men, Expression, Vivacious, Facial Expression, Facial

If [George] Zimmerman had been arrested for domestic violence, Trayvon Martin might still be alive.

source: - Source: www.huffingtonpost.com

Topics: Domestic Violence, Alive, Might, Zimmerman, Trayvon Martin

I think that we need to change the culture, not blame the people that are playing the only game that exists.

source: - "Gloria Steinem Responds to Mileygate". www.yahoo.com. October 9, 2013.

Topics: Thinking, Games, People

Being married is like having somebody permanently in your corner. It feels limitless, not limited.

Topics: Relationship, Marriage, Married, Married Couples, Lasting Marriage

We can tell our values by looking at our checkbook stubs.

Topics: Inspirational, Money, Powerful, Aerospace

Housewives are dependent creatures who are still children…parasites.

Topics: Children, Parasites, Housewife

Life after 50 or 60 is itself another country, as different as adolescence is from childhood, or as adulthood is from adolescence - and just as adventurous.

Topics: Country, Childhood, Different

There's a wonderful cartoon of Reagan in a Western hat and he's saying, "A pregnant woman in every home, a gun in every holster. Make America a man again." That sums up his attitudes: pro-military, anti-equality, pro-rich, anti-poor.

source: - Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

Topics: Attitude, Military, Home

[on sexual politics] The Golden Rule works for men as written, but for women it should go the other way around. We need to do unto ourselves as we do unto others.

source: - "Biography / Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

Topics: Men, Needs, Golden, Do Unto Others

Like art, revolutions come from combining what exists into what has never existed before.

source: - Gloria Steinem (1995). “Moving Beyond Words: Age, Rage, Sex, Power, Money, Muscles: Breaking Boundaries of Gender”, p.196, Simon and Schuster

Topics: Art, Feminist, Revolution

The cleanup costs of polluting a river, injecting pesticides into the ground water, or putting noxious gases into the air have not been figured into the cost of the manufacturing or agribusiness that put them there in the first place. Historically, the economic incentive has been to pollute.

source: - Gloria Steinem (2012). “Moving Beyond Words: Essays on Age, Rage, Sex, Power, Money, Muscles: Breaking the Boundaries of Gender”, p.421, Open Road Media

Topics: Air, Rivers, Water, Agribusiness, Pesticides

There are many ways of supporting gender equality, from something as simple as paid sick leave and flexible work hours to attributing an economic value to all care-giving, and making that amount tax deductible.

source: - Source: www.huffingtonpost.com

Topics: Simple, Economic Value, Giving, Sick Leave

A movement is only composed of people moving. To feel its warmth and motion around us is the end as well as the means.

source: - Gloria Steinem (2012). “Moving Beyond Words: Essays on Age, Rage, Sex, Power, Money, Muscles: Breaking the Boundaries of Gender”, p.485, Open Road Media

Topics: Moving, Mean, Weekend

Don't listen to me. Listen to yourself ... People often ask me at this age, 'Who am I passing the torch to?' First of all, I'm not giving up my torch, thank you! I'm using my torch to light other people's torches. ... If we each have a torch, there's a lot more light.

Topics: Giving Up, Light, People

An education is not a thing one gets, but a lifelong process.

Topics: Process, Lifelong

Planning ahead is a measure of class. The rich and even the middle class plan for future generations, but the poor can plan ahead only a few weeks or days.

source: - Gloria Steinem (2012). “Outrageous Acts and Everyday Rebellions”, p.272, Open Road Media

Topics: Class, Planning Ahead, Goal, Poor Planning, Middle Class

Having someone who looks like us but thinks like them is worse than having no one at all.

source: - "They should call it THEN". www.washingtontimes.com. July 13, 2001.

Topics: Thinking, Looks

Oppression has no logic--just a self-fulfilling prophecy, justified by a self-perpetuating system.

source: - Gloria Steinem (2012). “Moving Beyond Words: Essays on Age, Rage, Sex, Power, Money, Muscles: Breaking the Boundaries of Gender”, p.179, Open Road Media

Topics: Self, Logic, Oppression, Perpetuating, Self Fulfilling Prophecy

The power of the state stops at our skins. They can't restrict contraception [or] abortion. They can't take our kidneys. Bodily integrity is a principle.

source: - Source: www.elle.com

Topics: Integrity, Abortion, Skins

Whatever a 'superior' group has will be used to justify its superiority, and whatever an 'inferior' group has will be used to justify its plight. Black men were given poorly paid jobs because they were said to be 'stronger' than white men, while all women were relegated to poorly paid jobs because they were said to be 'weaker.

source: - Gloria Steinem (2012). “Outrageous Acts and Everyday Rebellions”, p.505, Open Road Media

Topics: Jobs, Men, White Man

For women, all women, whatever our sexuality, it's crucial to our health that we are able to separate sexuality from reproduction. I mean whether or not we can control when we give birth is the biggest element in our health, our education, our economic welfare, our life expectancy, everything.

source: - Interview with Max Miller, bigthink.com. October 28, 2010.

Topics: Mean, Giving, Able, Life Expectancy

When the past dies, there is mourning, but when the future dies our imaginations are compelled to carry it on.

source: - Gloria Steinem (2013). “Marilyn: Norma Jeane”, p.15, Open Road Media

Topics: Past, Imagination, Mourning

... if young women have a problem, it's only that they think there's no problem.

source: - Gloria Steinem (2012). “Outrageous Acts and Everyday Rebellions”, p.11, Open Road Media

Topics: Thinking, Youth, Problem

Women fear endangering men's approval so much, we don't even wait for them to say no. Or else we protect them, even if it means saying no to ourselves.

source: - Gloria Steinem (2012). “Outrageous Acts and Everyday Rebellions”, p.176, Open Road Media

Topics: Mean, Men, Waiting

We've learned that women can and should do 'men's jobs,' for instance, and we've won the principle (if not the fact) of getting equal pay. But we haven't yet established the principle (much less the fact) that men can and should do 'women's jobs': that homemaking and child-rearing are as much a man's responsibility, too, and that those jobs in which women are concentrated outside the home would probably be better paid if more men became secretaries, file clerks, and nurses, too.

Topics: Jobs, Children, Home, Homemaking, Child Rearing

Writing is the only thing that, when I do it, I don't feel I should be doing something else.

Topics: Writing, Should, Feels, Liberated Woman, Successful Writing

Sexism is not inevitable. It's only about controlling reproduction and therefore controlling women.

source: - Source: www.washingtontimes.com

Topics: Sexism, Inevitable, Controlling Women

Voting isn't the most we can do. But it is the least.

source: - Gloria Steinem (2015). “My Life on the Road”, p.124, Oneworld Publications

Topics: Voting, Can Do

Each others' lives are our best textbooks.

Topics: Textbooks

If you really want to be lonely, get married.

Topics: Lonely, Want, Married

Intelligence in the service of poor instinct is really dangerous.

Topics: Intelligence, Instinct, Poor

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

source: - Source: www.huffingtonpost.com

Topics: Men, Quality, Gains

There's no emotion more revolutionary than empathy.

source: - "Why Gloria Steinem Says She And Jennifer Aniston Are In ‘Deep Sh*t’". MAKERS Conference Q&A, www.huffingtonpost.com. February 11, 2014.

Topics: Empathy, Emotion, Revolutionary

Feminism starts out being very simple, and it ends up being a world view that questions hierarchy altogether.

Topics: Simple, Views, Feminism

So why is the sex barrier not taken as seriously as the racial one?

source: - "Women Are Never Front-Runners" by Gloria Steinem, www.nytimes.com. January 8, 2008.

Topics: Sex, Taken, Barriers

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

Topics: Mother, Generations, My Generation

anything being perceived as being superior takes the noun. And everything that isn't, that's judged to be inferior, requires an adjective. So there are black novelists and novelists. There are women physicians and physicians. Male nurses and nurses.

Topics: Nurse, Racism, Black

I don't like writing. I like having written.

Topics: Writing, Written

Women must have seats at the table because peace is too crucial to be left only to the politicians or only to the male half of our world.

Topics: Our World, Males, Half

More women are becoming the men they wanted to marry, but too few men are becoming the women they wanted to marry. That leaves most women with two jobs, one outside the home and one in it.

source: - Gloria Steinem (2012). “Outrageous Acts and Everyday Rebellions”, p.250, Open Road Media

Topics: Jobs, Home, Men, Two Jobs

It's going to take a while because for the last 500 years patriarchal societies have been devoted to controlling reproduction and that means controlling women. So we got into this masculine/feminine, dominant/passive paradigm, and it's going to take a while to get out.

source: - Source: www.elle.com

Topics: Mean, Years, Lasts, Patriarchal Society, Controlling Women

Her searches after knowledge were arbitrary and without context. It was as if she were shining a small flashlight of curiosity into the dark room of the world.

source: - Gloria Steinem (2013). “Marilyn: Norma Jeane”, p.183, Open Road Media

Topics: Dark, Shining, Curiosity, Flashlights

If you say, I'm for equal pay, that's a reform. But if you say. I'm a feminist, that's a transformation of society.

Topics: Equal Pay, Feminist, Reform, Being Equal

You have no choice but to live in the present, if you're really being open to events and people as they come along.

source: - Source: www.huffingtonpost.com

Topics: People, Choices, Events

I think of the future in two ways - survival plus moving forward. Under survival, I would put all the efforts to save the female half of the world from violence directed at us specifically because we are female.

source: - Source: www.huffingtonpost.com

Topics: Moving, Thinking, Two, Masculine And Feminine, Gender Roles

You're a unique person. You should do what you're suited to do. We all should. It's the only way to be happy. That pressure is all outside. It's external.

source: - Source: www.elle.com

Topics: Unique, Way, Pressure

More and more men are raising children or want to be close to their kids. They don't want to just lead work-obsessed lives and end up 50 years later with an engraved watch.

source: - Source: www.huffingtonpost.com

Topics: Children, Kids, Men, Engraved

Allowing women the power to decide when and whether to have children is the only way to solve the 7 billion human load on this planet that threatens to destroy it. Women's equality is also men's survival.

source: - Source: www.huffingtonpost.com

Topics: Children, Men, Survival

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

source: - Gloria Steinem (1986). “Outrageous acts and everyday rebellions”, New Amer Library

Topics: Inspiring, Body, Demand, Women's Bodies, Bathing Suits

Childbirth is more admirable than conquest, more amazing than self-defense, and as courageous as either one.

source: - Gloria Steinem (2017). “Passion, Politics, and Everyday Activism: Collected Essays: Moving Beyond Words; Outrageous Acts and Everyday Rebellions; and Revolution from Within”, p.815, Open Road Media

Topics: Pregnancy, Self, Defense, Childbirth, Birth Of A Child

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

source: - Gloria Steinem (1995). “Moving Beyond Words: Age, Rage, Sex, Power, Money, Muscles: Breaking Boundaries of Gender”, p.270, Simon and Schuster

Topics: Details, May, Paganism, Inquisitive, No Turning Back

We'll never solve the feminization of power until we solve the masculinity of wealth.

Topics: Wealth, Feminine, Masculinity

Every social justice movement that I know of has come out of people sitting in small groups, telling their life stories, and discovering that other people have shared similar experiences.

source: - Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

Topics: Justice, People, Sitting, Small Groups

Logic is in the eye of the logician.

source: - Gloria Steinem (2012). “Outrageous Acts and Everyday Rebellions”, p.509, Open Road Media

Topics: Witty, Powerful, Philosophy

Most women's magazines simply try to mold women into bigger and better consumers.

source: - Interview with Digby Diehl, www.maryellenmark.com. March 1972.

Topics: Women, Memorable, Feminist, Bigger And Better

Someone once asked me why women don't gamble as much as men do and I gave the commonsensical reply that we don't have as much money. That was a true but incomplete answer. In fact, women's total instinct for gambling is satisfied by marriage.

Topics: Marriage, Men, Gambling, Gamble, Betting

For me, writing is the only thing that passes the three tests of metier: (1) when I'm doing it, I don't feel that I should be doing something else instead: (2) it produces a sense of accomplishment and, nce in a while, pride; and (3) it's frightening.

Topics: Writing, Pride, Accomplishment, Sense Of Accomplishment

If technology and medicine are used by women to have children or not to have children or to have healthier children - that's one thing. But if it's used to say, 'You're not a real woman unless you have a child, therefore take all these dangerous hormones and have one at 54," then it's another story.

Topics: Children, Real, Technology

My father was the Jewish half of the family, yet it was my mother who taught me to have pride in that tradition.

source: - Gloria Steinem (2012). “Outrageous Acts and Everyday Rebellions”, p.231, Open Road Media

Topics: Mother, Father, Pride

Prejudice marks a mental landmine.

source: - Gloria Steinem (2012). “Moving Beyond Words: Essays on Age, Rage, Sex, Power, Money, Muscles: Breaking the Boundaries of Gender”, p.186, Open Road Media

Topics: Prejudice, Mark, Landmines

It's never to late for a happy childhood.

Topics: Life, Childhood, Late

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

Topics: Girlfriend, Humorous, Henry Kissinger, Kissinger