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Feminism Quotes

Browse 5085 quotes about Feminism.

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Feminism Quotes

“For women it is generally admitted that her sexual life is null or subordinate to that of the companion-legal or otherwise-that she has chosen. She should live and feel for him; be passionate if he is, and maintain herself neutral if he is cold. Until now a man has considered sensual desire as something that pertains to him, not recognizing in women a moral and physical self organized like him.”

SelfPassionSexWomenFeminismSexualitySensualitySensual
Book:A Nation Of Women: An Early Feminist Speaks Out; Mi Opinion Sobre Las Libertades, Derechos y Deberes de la Mujer (Recovering the U.s. Hispanic Literary Heritage)
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“The school song at Accrington High School for Girls was 'Let Us Now Praise Famous Men,' a terrible choice for an all-girls' school, but one that helped turn me into a feminist. Where were the famous women--indeed any women--and why weren't we praising them? I vowed to myself that I would be famous and that I would come back and be praised.”

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Book:Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?
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“Young women do know who they are - OF COURSE THEY DO! - it's just they're told they're not allowed to be it so often, and told to suppress their feelings so continually, that they gradually lose their entire instinct for happiness and self-realization, and turn into those panicking creatures you meet at parties who dance madly when 'I Am What I Am' comes on the stereo, then spend the rest of the evening crying.”

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Author:Caitlin Moran
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“There is, then, intellectual knowledge--the stuff of research studies and think pieces--and there is experiential knowing. Both are important, and women from all backgrounds might possess both. But we rarely exalt the knowing, which is the only kind of feminism many working women have.”

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Book:She Come By It Natural: Dolly Parton and the Women Who Lived Her Songs
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“When we see love as the will to nurture one's own or another's spiritual growth, revealed through acts of care, respect, knowing, and assuming responsibility, the foundation of all love in our life is the same. There is no special love exclusively reserved for romantic partners. Genuine love is the foundation of our engagement with ourselves, with family, with friends, with partners, with everyone we choose to love.”

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Author:Bell Hooks
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“Women who were lesbians, of all races and classes, were at the forefront of the radicalization of contemporary female resistance to patriarchy in part because this group had their sexual preference already placed themselves outside the domain of heterosexist privilege and protection, both in the home and in the workplace. No matter their class, they were social outcasts.”

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Book:Where We Stand: Class Matters
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“One of the longest-running public health studies dates from the 1970s, when half of the families in a number of villages in Bangladesh were given contraceptives and the other half were not. Twenty years later, the mothers who took contraceptives were healthier. Their children were better nourished. Their families had more wealth. The women had higher wages. Their sons and daughters had more schooling. The reasons are simple: When the women were able to time and space their pregnancies, they were more likely to advance their education, earn an income, raise healthy children, and have the time and money to give each child the food, care, and education needed to thrive. When children reach their potential, they don’t end up poor. This is how families and countries get out of poverty. In fact, no country in the last fifty years has emerged from poverty without expanding access to contraceptives.”

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Book:The Moment of Lift: How Empowering Women Changes the World
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“Making women into small business owners, factory workers, and heads of households, not participants & leaders of collective social movements or activists demanding more accountability of the World Trade Organization, the IMF or the World Bank, these institutions maintain control over the economic growth and development of these countries and provide access to cheap labor, mineral resources, and military bases for the global north while the women themselves remain at or below poverty level.”

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Book:Feminist Accountability: Disrupting Violence and Transforming Power
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“Ideally, what should be said to every child, repeatedly, throughout his or her school life is something like this: 'You are in the process of being indoctrinated. We have not yet evolved a system of education that is not a system of indoctrination. We are sorry, but it is the best we can do. What you are being taught here is an amalgam of current prejudice and the choices of this particular culture. The slightest look at history will show how impermanent these must be. You are being taught by people who have been able to accommodate themselves to a regime of thought laid down by their predecessors. It is a self-perpetuating system. Those of you who are more robust and individual than others will be encouraged to leave and find ways of educating yourself — educating your own judgements. Those that stay must remember, always, and all the time, that they are being moulded and patterned to fit into the narrow and particular needs of this particular society.”

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Book:The Golden Notebook
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“If a woman is not instructed and educated will she be able to educate, counsel, and guide her children suitably? No. And this is an important matter that should interest women, the home being the first and most necessary of schools. Whatever the child sees the mother do or say is what the child will observe and learn.”

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Book:A Nation Of Women: An Early Feminist Speaks Out; Mi Opinion Sobre Las Libertades, Derechos y Deberes de la Mujer (Recovering the U.s. Hispanic Literary Heritage)
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“No hay duda que la primera y mejor escuela es el hogar. La mejor y superior maestra para el niño, es, la madre instruida. No doubt, the first and best school is the home. The best and most superior teacher for the child is an educated mother”

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Book:A Nation Of Women: An Early Feminist Speaks Out; Mi Opinion Sobre Las Libertades, Derechos y Deberes de la Mujer (Recovering the U.s. Hispanic Literary Heritage)
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“In an affluent society, even men of well-below-average provisioning capability can easily reproduce at above replacement rate. They may, for that matter, be better husbands and fathers than most wealthy men. Considered rationally, therefore, general prosperity ought to lead to a flourishing society of moderately large families. But the female sex instinct, as the reader may possibly have noticed, is not rational. It is triggered by relative rather than absolute wealth, and so men’s sexual attractiveness is still determined by their status within the social hierarchy as perceived by women.”

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Book:Sexual Utopia in Power: The Feminist Revolt Against Civilization
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“If men could see us as we really are, they would be a little amazed; but the cleverest, the acutest men are often under an illusion about women: they do not read them in a true light: they misapprehend them, both for good and evil: their good woman is a queer thing, half doll, half angel; their bad woman almost always a fiend.”

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Book:Shirley
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“Right. I look fine. Except I don't,' said Zora, tugging sadly at her man's nightshirt. This was why Kiki had dreaded having girls: she knew she wouldn't be able to protect them from self-disgust. To that end she had tried banning television in the early years, and never had a lipstick or a woman's magazine crossed the threshold of the Belsey home to Kiki's knowledge, but these and other precautionary measures had made no difference. It was in the air, or so it seemed to Kiki, this hatred of women and their bodies-- it seeped in with every draught in the house; people brought it home on their shoes, they breathed it in off their newspapers. There was no way to control it.”

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Book:On Beauty
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“Women are supposed to be very calm generally: but women feel just as men feel; they need exercise for their faculties, and a field for their efforts as much as their brothers do; they suffer from too rigid a restraint, too absolute a stagnation, precisely as men would suffer, and it is narrow-minded in their more privileged fellow-creatures to say that they ought to confine themselves to making puddings and knitting stockings, to playing on the piano and embroidering bags. It is thoughtless to condemn them, or laugh at them, if they seek to do more or learn more than custom has pronounced necessary for their sex.”

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Author:Charlotte Bronte
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“When, as happened recently in France, an attempt is made to coerce women out of the burqa rather than creating a situation in which a woman can choose what she wishes to do, it’s not about liberating her, but about unclothing her. It becomes an act of humiliation and cultural imperialism. It’s not about the burqa. It’s about the coercion. Coercing a woman out of a burqa is as bad as coercing her into one. Viewing gender in this way, shorn of social, political and economic context, makes it an issue of identity, a battle of props and costumes. It is what allowed the US government to use western feminist groups as moral cover when it invaded Afghanistan in 2001. Afghan women were (and are) in terrible trouble under the Taliban. But dropping daisy-cutters on them was not going to solve their problems.”

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Author:Arundhati Roy
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“..the hope I have for women: that we can start to see ourselves-and encourage men to see us-as more than just the sum of our sexual parts: not as virgins or whores, as mothers or girlfriends, or as existing only in relation to men, but as people with independent desires, hopes and abilities. But I know that this can't happen as long as American culture continues to inundate us with gender-role messages that place everyone-men and women-in an unnatural hierarchical order that's impossible to maintain without strife. For women to move forward, and for men to break free, we need to overcome the masculinity status quo-together.”

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Book:The Purity Myth: How America's Obsession with Virginity Is Hurting Young Women
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