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Gloria Steinem

Gloria Steinem Quotes

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Famous Gloria Steinem Quotes

“I 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.”

Feminism
Book:My Life on the Road
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“Long before all these divisions were opened between home and the road, betweens a woman's place and a man's world, humans followed the crops, the seasons, traveling with their families, our companions, animals, our tents. We built campfires and moved from place to place. This way of traveling is still in our cellular memory. Living things have evolved as travelers, Even migrating birds know that nature doesn't demand a choice between nesting and flight.”

Feminism
Book:My Life on the Road
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“An 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.”

FeminismAbortion Rights
Book:My Life on the Road
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“God may be in the details, but the goddess is in the questions. Once we begin to ask them, there’s no turning back. Instead of trying to fit women into existing middle-class professions or working-class theories, these radical feminist groups assumed that women’s experience could be the root of theory. Whether at speak-outs or consciousness-raising groups, “talking circles” or public hearings, the essential idea was: Tell your personal truth, listen to other women’s stories, see what themes are shared, and discover that the personal is political.”

FeminismWomen S RightsEssaysWomen S LiberationRadical Feminism
Book:Doing Sixty & Seventy
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“I’m not sure feminism should require an adjective. Believing in the full social, political, and economic quality of women, which is what the dictionary says “feminism” means, is enough to make a revolution in itself. But if I had to choose only one adjective, I still would opt for radical feminist. I know our adversaries keep equating that word with violent or man-hating, crazy or extremist—though being a plain vanilla feminist doesn’t keep one safe from such epithets either. Neither does saying, “I’m not a feminist, but.…” Nonetheless, radical seems an honest indication of the fundamental change we have in mind: the false division of human nature into “feminine” and “masculine” is the root of all other divisions into subject and object, active and passive, and—the beginning of hierarchy.”

FeminismWomen S RightsEssaysWomen S LiberationRadical Feminism
Book:Doing Sixty & Seventy
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“I used to indulge in magical thinking when problems seemed insurmountable. Often, this focused on men, for they seemed to be the only ones with power to intercede with the gods. Now it has been so long since I fantasized a magical rescue that I can barely remember the intensity of that longing. Instead, I feel my own strength, take pleasure in the company of friends, male and female, who are mortals. I no longer believe in gods, except those in each of us.”

FeminismWomen S RightsEssaysWomen S LiberationRadical Feminism
Book:Doing Sixty & Seventy
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“We understand that being able to help dependent children find what they need can be a gift in itself. Why shouldn’t we feel the same about the other end of life? Why shouldn’t the equally natural needs of age be an opportunity for others to give? Why indeed? Now I wonder if women’s fear of dependency doesn’t stem from being too much depended upon. Perhaps if we equalize the giving of care—with men, with society—this will bring a new freedom to receive.”

FeminismWomen S RightsEssaysWomen S LiberationRadical Feminism
Book:Doing Sixty & Seventy
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“Now I look at artificial boundaries—lines that can stop no current of air or drought or polluted river—and mourn the violence lavished on defending them. Long ago, in times suspiciously set aside as “prehistory,” we were mostly nomadic peoples who claimed nothing but crisscrossing migratory paths. Cultures were the richest where different peoples and paths were most intermingled. We’re still a nomadic species; indeed, we move and travel on this earth more than ever before. Yet we insist on the destructive fiction of nationalism, one that becomes even more dangerous when it joins with religions that try to create nationalistic gods.”

FeminismWomen S RightsEssaysWomen S LiberationRadical Feminism
Book:Doing Sixty & Seventy
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“As a group who can never afford the expensive fiction of having a nation—and whose bodies suffer from nationalism by being used as its means of reproduction—women of all races and cultures may be the most motivated to ask: How can we create a future beyond nationalism? After all, it has been around for less than five percent of humanity’s history. We know we have had more migratory and communal ways of sharing this Spaceship Earth. There could be again.”

FeminismWomen S RightsEssaysWomen S LiberationRadical Feminism
Book:Doing Sixty & Seventy
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“I realized that most women in their teens and twenties hadn’t yet experienced one or more of the great radicalizing events of a woman’s life: marrying and discovering it isn’t yet an equal (or even nonviolent) institution; getting into the paid labor force and experiencing its limits, from the corporate “glass ceiling” to the “sticky floor” of the pink-collar ghetto; having children and finding out who takes care of them and who doesn’t; and, finally, aging, still the most impoverishing and disempowering event for women of every race and so the most radicalizing.”

FeminismWomen S RightsEssaysWomen S LiberationRadical Feminism
Book:Doing Sixty & Seventy
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“Men tend to rebel when young and become more conservative with age, but women tend to be more conservative when young and become rebellious as we grow older. I’d noticed this pattern in the suffragist/ abolitionist era, when women over fifty, sixty, even seventy were a disproportionate number of the activists and leaders—think of Sojourner Truth and Susan B. Anthony, or Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Ida B. Wells—but I’d assumed it was due to the restrictions placed on younger women by uncontrolled childbirth and their status as household chattel: hard facts that limited all but a few single or widowed white women, and all but even fewer free women of color.”

FeminismWomen S RightsEssaysWomen S LiberationRadical Feminism
Book:Doing Sixty & Seventy
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“Before she leaves, my new friend tells me to look out of the big picture window at the parking lot. "See that purple Harley out there—that big gorgeous one? That's mine. I used to ride behind my husband, and never took the road on my own. Then after the kids were grown, I put my foot down. It was hard, but we finally got to be partners. Now he says he likes it better this way. He doesn't have to worry about his bike breaking down or getting a heart attach and totaling us both. I even put 'Ms.' on my license plate—and you should see my grandkids' faces when Grandma rides up on her purple Harley!" On my own again, I look out at the barren sand and tortured rocks of the Badlands, stretching for miles. I've walked there, and I know that, close up, the barren sand reveals layers of pale rose and beige and cream, and the rocks turn out to have intricate womblike openings. Even in the distant cliffs, caves of rescue appear. What seems to be one thing from a distance is very different close up. I tell you this story because it's the kind of lesson that can be learned only on the road. And also because I've come to believe that, inside, each of us has a purple motorcycle. We have only to discover it—and ride.”

FeminismGloria SteinemMy Life On The Road
Book:My Life on the Road
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“A quote is the essence of a story. We all need stories to convey ideas, justice, anger, humanity, hope, laughter, learning, and whatever makes us understand or feel understood”

Inspirational QuotesFeminismQuotes To Live ByQuotes For InstagramMovement QuotesThe Truth Will Set You FreeGloria Steine
Book:The Truth Will Set You Free, But First It Will Piss You Off!: Thoughts on Life, Love, and Rebellion
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“There's no such thing as post-feminism. It's like saying post-democracy, excuse me, what does that mean? We're nowhere near equality, so the very idea of post-feminism is ridiculous. The same people who 30-40 years ago said the women's movement is not necessary, 'it's going against nature, my wife is not interested' [are] the same people now saying 'well it used to be necessary but not anymore.' The very invention of the word post-feminism is the current form of resistance.”

PeopleYearsWellsMeanDoeSaidIdeasFormUsedDemocracyWifeFeminismMovementYears AgoCurrentsExcuseMy WifeRidiculousInventionResistanceUsed To BePostsNot InterestedExcuse Me
Author:Gloria Steinem
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“I spend a lot of time on college campuses, and I don't quite understand where the idea comes from that young women are not moving forward. In fact, statistically, if you look at the public opinion polls, young women are much more supportive of feminism and feminist issues than older women are.”

IfsLooksIdeasFactsMovingYoungOpinionIssuesFeminismCollegeFeministMoving ForwardYoung WomenSupportivePublic OpinionPollsCampusOlder WomenCollege CampusOpinion Polls
Author:Gloria Steinem
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“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.”

MenChildrenWomenCareersWorryFeminismAspectFeministWomens RightsCampusCombiningI Am WomanCollege Campus
Book:Passion, Politics, and Everyday Activism: Collected Essays: Moving Beyond Words; Outrageous Acts and Everyday Rebellions; and Revolution from Within
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