GSGloria Steinem

149 collected words

Gloria Steinem

Dates not recorded

Name supplied in the contributor-provided quotation collection. Basic attribution label; identity, lifetime and quotation authenticity have not been independently verified.

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Quotations and sayings

01Undated

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

Gloria Steinem / quote

02Undated

Rich People plan for three generationsPoor people plan for Saturday night

Gloria Steinem / quote

03Undated

Men should think twice before making widowhood women's only path to power.

Gloria Steinem / quote

04Undated

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

Gloria Steinem / quote

05Undated

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.

Gloria Steinem / quote

06Undated

In the 1970s, while researching in the Library of Congress, I found an obscure history of religious architecture that assumed a fact as if it were common knowledge: the traditional design of most patriarchal buildings of worship imitates the female body. Thus, there is an outer and inner entrance, labia majora and labia minora; a central vaginal aisle toward the altar; two curved ovarian structures on either side; and then in the sacred center, the altar or womb, where the miracle takes place - where males gives birth.Though this comparison was new to to me, it struck home like a rock down a well. Of course, I thought. The central ceremony of patriarchal religions is one in which men take over the yoni-power of creation by giving birth symbolically. 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. No wonder the male priesthood tries to keep women away from the altar, just as women are kept away from control of our own powers of reproduction. Symbolic or real, it's all devoted to controlling the power that resides in the female body.

Gloria Steinem / quote

07Undated

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.

Gloria Steinem / quote

08Undated

If you find yourself drawn to an event against all logic, go. The universe is telling you something.

Gloria Steinem / quote

09Undated

Being graded for memorizing male accomplishments with the deep message that we can learn what others do but never do it ourselves.

Gloria Steinem / quote

10Undated

Thinking about our schooling in different decades and parts of the country, all three of us in that kitchen discover that we were taught more about ancient Greece and Rome than about the history of the land we live on. We learned about the pyramid builders of Egypt but not the pyramid builders of the Mississippi River.

Gloria Steinem / quote

11Undated

Altogether, if I had to pick one place to hang out anywhere, from New York to Cape Town and Australia to Hong Kong, a bookstore would be it.

Gloria Steinem / quote

12Undated

Like the spider spinning its web, we create much of the outer world from within ourselves. The universe is a joint product of the observer and the observed.

Gloria Steinem / quote

13Undated

Artists strive to free this true and spontaneous self in their work. Creativity, meditation are ways of freeing an inner voice.

Gloria Steinem / quote

14Undated

As always, self-esteem had created an ability to be generous.

Gloria Steinem / quote

15Undated

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

Gloria Steinem / quote

16Undated

Most women are one man away from welfare.

Gloria Steinem / quote

17Undated

I think we each come out of the womb with some unique way of looking at the world and if we don't express it, we loose faith in ourselves.

Gloria Steinem / quote

18Undated

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

Gloria Steinem / quote

19Undated

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

Gloria Steinem / quote

20Undated

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 . . . She will need her sisterhood.

Gloria Steinem / quote

21Undated

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

Gloria Steinem / quote

22Undated

I didn’t hear words that were accurate, much less prideful. For example, I never once heard the word clitoris. It would be years before I learned that females possessed the only organ in the human body with no function than to feel pleasure. (If such an organ were unique to the male body, can you imagine how much we would hear about it—and what it would be used to justify?)

Gloria Steinem / quote

23Undated

In short, we would discover, as we should already, that logic is in the eye of the logician. (For instance, here's an idea for theorists and logicians: 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? I leave further improvisation up to you.)

Gloria Steinem / quote

24Undated

The uncomfortable truth seems to be that the amount of talk by women has been measured less against the amount of men's talk than against the expectation of female silence.

Gloria Steinem / quote