Home / Quotes / Quote by Gloria Steinem

Quote by Gloria Steinem

“The first problem for all of us, men and woman, is not to learn, but to unlearn. We are filled with the popular wisdom of several centuries just past, and we are terrified to give it up. Patriotism means obedience, age means wisdom, woman means submission, black means inferior: these are preconceptions imbedded so deeply in our thinking that we honestly may not know that they are there.”

Quote by Gloria Steinem

Author

Gloria Steinem is an American journalist and social activist, renowned for her leadership in the women's rights movement. Born on March 25, 1934, she was one of the founding editors of Ms. magazine and played a pivotal role in the women's liberation movement of the 1960s and 1970s. Steinem's work has covered a wide range of issues from gender equality to environmental justice. more

You May Also Like

“All biographers, no matter how sympathetic, end up using their subjects as mirrors to figure themselves out. I don't want to be anyone's mirror.”

Want Ends Matter Subjects Figures Mirrors Sympathetic Biographers

Author:Gloria Steinem

“change starts at the bottom. I think we're disempowered by the idea that it starts at the top, when really change is like a tree. It does start at the bottom.”

Thinking Doe Ideas Change Tree Bottom

Author:Gloria Steinem

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

Happens Change Depends

Author:Gloria Steinem

“It used to be said that this country was a child-centered one. Nothing could be further from the truth. Children have been our lowest priority, both in economic and emotional spending.”

Children Has Beens Said Country Used United States Economic Emotional Spending Priorities Used To Be Lowest

Author:Gloria Steinem

“I no longer believe the conservative message that children are naturally selfish and destructive creatures who need civilizing by hierarchies or painful controls. On the contrary, I believe that hierarchy and painful controls create destructive people. And I no longer believe the liberal message that children are blank slates on which society can write anything. On the contrary, 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.”

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

Ifs Children Happens

Author:Gloria Steinem

“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.”

Language Black Racism Males Discrimination Superiors Novelists Judged Nurse Inferiors Physicians Adjectives Nouns

Author:Gloria Steinem

“There is bias and sexism everywhere, just like there are problems of racism and homophobia stemming from the whole notion that we're arranged in a hierarchy, that we're ranked rather than linked.”

Whole Problem Racism Notion Discrimination Sexism Bias Linked Hierarchy Homophobia

Author:Gloria Steinem

“why is the word 'qualified' applied only to those who have to be more so?”

Discrimination Qualified

Book:Moving Beyond Words: Essays on Age, Rage, Sex, Power, Money, Muscles: Breaking the Boundaries of Gender

Source: Moving Beyond Words: Essays on Age, Rage, Sex, Power, Money, Muscles: Breaking the Boundaries of Gender

“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.”

Men Said Jobs Used Given Black White Groups Paid Stronger Discrimination Superiors Justify Inferiors Superiority White Man Plight

Book:Outrageous acts and everyday rebellions

Source: Outrageous acts and everyday rebellions