01UndatedAt first, feminists were assumed to be only discontented suburban housewives; then a small bunch of women's "libbers", bra burners, and radicals; then women on welfare; then briefcase carrying imitations of male executives; then unfulfilled women who forgot to have children; then women voters...that really could decide elections. That last was too dangerous, so suddenly we were told we were in a "postfeminist" age...Gloria Steinem / quote ↗
02UndatedNever having seen women play chess, they assumed this game wasn't for them and without even a female teacher as role model, they dropped out.Gloria Steinem / quote ↗
03UndatedCitizens who refuse to obey anything but their own conscience can transform countries, it is the basis of any real democracy.Gloria Steinem / quote ↗
04UndatedThe art of life is not controlling what happens to us, but using what happens to usGloria Steinem / quote ↗
05UndatedI have yet to hear a man ask for advice on how to combine marriage and a career.Gloria Steinem / quote ↗
06UndatedAs Robin Morgan wrote so wisely, "Hate generalizes, love specifies". Thats what makes going on the road so important. It definitely specifies.Gloria Steinem / quote ↗
07UndatedA woman reading Playboy feels a little like a Jew reading a Nazi manual.Gloria Steinem / quote ↗
08UndatedI myself cried when I got angry, then became unable to explain why I was angry in the first place. Later I would discover this was endemic among female human beings. Anger is supposed to be "unfeminine" so we suppress it -until it overflows. I could see that not speaking up made my mother feel worse. This was my first hint of the truism that depression is anger turned inward; thus women are twice as likely to be depressed. My mother paid a high price for caring so much, yet being able to do so little about it. In this way, she led me toward am activist place where she herself could never go.Gloria Steinem / quote ↗
09UndatedBut why didn't you leave? Why didn't you take my sister and go to New York?" she would say it didn't matter, that she was lucky to have my sister and me. If I pressed hard enough, she would add, "If I'd left, you never would have been born." I never had the courage to say: But you would have been born instead.Gloria Steinem / quote ↗
10UndatedWomen of all groups were measurably more likely than their male counterparts to vote for equality, health, and education, and against violence as a way of solving conflict. It wasn't about biology, but experience.Gloria Steinem / quote ↗
11UndatedFeminism...is not 'women as victims' but women refusing to be victims.Gloria Steinem / quote ↗
12UndatedThere are really not many jobs that actually acquire a penis or a vagina, and all other occupations should be open to everyone.Gloria Steinem / quote ↗
13UndatedI’m not advocating a competition for who has it toughest. The caste systems of sex and race are interdependent and can only be uprooted together. It’s time to take equal pride in breaking all the barriers.Gloria Steinem / quote ↗
14UndatedWhen people ask me why I still have hope and energy after all these years, I always say: Because I travel.Gloria Steinem / quote ↗
15UndatedDon't write when you're angry and under deadline, with time to test it only on friends who know what you mean, not on strangers who don't.Gloria Steinem / quote ↗
16UndatedMy father did not have to trade dying alone for the joys of the road. My mother did not have to give up a journey of her own to have a home. Neither do I. Neither do you.Gloria Steinem / quote ↗
17UndatedAs feminism has changed academia by enlarging what is taught, academia has sometimes changed feminism.Gloria Steinem / quote ↗
18UndatedMrs. Greene made me understand the parallels between race and caste--- and how women's bodies were used to perpetuate both. Different prisons. Same key.Gloria Steinem / quote ↗
19UndatedThe idea that women are 'our own worst enemies' forces us to admit that we don't have the power to be, even if we wanted too.Gloria Steinem / quote ↗
21UndatedOne of the saddest things I hear as I travel is "I don't know enough to be a feminist." Or even "I'm not smart enough to be a feminist." It breaks my heart.Gloria Steinem / quote ↗
22UndatedI was angry because young men in politics were treated like rising stars and young women were treated like - well - young women. {...}I was angry about the human talent that was lost just because it was born into a female body, and the mediocrity that was rewarded because it was born into a male one.Gloria Steinem / quote ↗
23UndatedAn older man who seems to be the leader of the Jesus Tshirt group says that the Bible forbids abortion in its commandment “Thou shall not kill.”But being in the Bible Belt, people really know their Bible, and an older woman cites Exodus 21:22–23, a passage that says a man who causes a pregnant woman to miscarry must pay a fine but is not charged with murder, not unless the woman herself dies.Thus the Bible is making clear, that a dependent life is not the same as an independent life.Gloria Steinem / quote ↗
24UndatedFather Egan continues to write about everything from the injustice of current wars to the past and future of Catholic mysticism.In the Catholic Reporter, he publishes an article titled "Celibacy, a Vague Old Cross on Priestly Backs", and explains that it started "only in 1139 when the church no longer wanted to be financially responsible for the children of priests.Gloria Steinem / quote ↗