Top 100 Feminism's Quotes
#1. American feminism's nose dive began when Kate Millet, that imploding beanbag of poisonous self-pity, declared Freud a sexist. Trying to build a sex theory without studying Freud, women have made nothing but mud pies.
Camille Paglia
#2. Feminism's ultimate success is that we don't need it anymore.
S. E. Cupp
#3. Should we tolerate debate within feminism's ranks? Undebatable! But it's not so simple: women are socialised to avoid conflict; when we do differ, especially on politics and in public, it's still tediously labelled a 'catfight.'
Robin Morgan
#4. Feminism's failings do not mean we should eschew feminism entirely. People do terrible things all the time, but we don't regularly disown our humanity. We disavow the terrible things. We should disavow the failures of feminism without disavowing its many successes and how far we have come.
Roxane Gay
#5. I think feminism's a bit misinterpreted. It was about casting off all gender roles. There's nothing wrong with a man holding a door open for a girl. But we sort of threw away all the rules, so everybody's confused. And dating becomes a sloppy, uncomfortable, unpleasant thing.
Zosia Mamet
#6. Feminism's latest victory: the right to get your limbs blown off in war. Congratulations.
Tucker Carlson
#7. Feminism's agenda is basic: It asks that women not be forced to choose between public justice and private happiness.
Susan Faludi
#8. That is the corrosive paradox of gender feminism's misandrist stance: no group of women can wage war on men without at the same time denigrating the women who respect those men.
Christina Hoff Sommers
#9. Women's history is the
primary tool for women's emancipation.
Gerda Lerner
#10. People think I'm selling feminism in my books, but what I'm really doing is writing advertising copy for expensive private colleges that most women can't afford anyway. Oh, and try to find a job with a major in English literature. No luck? Joke's on you, sucker!
Mary Gordon
#11. When women turn on women, and take cheap shots at their decisions purely to score political points it serves as proof that feminism, as a movement, is dead and no longer relevant or credible.
S. E. Cupp
#13. To fly/steal is woman's gesture, to steal into language to make it fly.
Helene Cixous
#14. Feminism, unlike almost every other social movement, is not a struggle against a distinct oppressor - it's not the ruling class or the occupiers or the colonizers - it's against a deeply held set of beliefs and assumptions that we women, far too often, hold ourselves.
Kavita Ramdas
#15. ..the women's movement never left the father Dick's side....We got a share of genocide profits and we love it...If we're Dick's sister and want what he has gotten, then in the end we support that system that he got it all from.
Mary Barfoot
#16. If one can know how good a city is by its smell, one should know how good a society is by the women's status.
Santosh Kalwar
#17. What's a feminist?" Julie asked.
"Someone who thinks women are fish," Barton replied. He was smiling at Lily. "And that men are bicycles, which makes us basically useless to anyone of the fish persuasion. But it does categorize us as creatures who exist solely for the purpose of being ridden.
Dianne Dixon
#18. If you read every poem in every anthology of Greek poetry, you wouldn't read one poem in which a character of the woman who's loved is described or matters.
Kathy Acker
#19. But here's the thing: other people's opinions are not the truth. We live in a world that puts us into boxes and labels them with Sharpies, yet those boxes are lies. They flatten us; they limit who we really are. Feminism
Kelly Jensen
#20. There's no self-expression or joy in these joints
no springboard to self-discovery, or adventure, like any decent night out involving men, women, alcohol, and taking your clothes off. Why do many people have a gut reaction to strip clubs? Because inside them, no one is having fun.
Caitlin Moran
#21. Feminism is sort of like God. Many people profess to believe in it, but no one seems to be able to define it to everyone's satisfaction.
Aaron Allston
#22. In fact, there is perhaps only one human being in a thousand who is passionately interested in his job for the job's sake. The difference is that if that one person in a thousand is a man, we say, simply, that he is passionately keen on his job; if she is a woman, we say she is a freak.
Dorothy L. Sayers
#23. She had called herself a whore. That was a man's word, a shame-word flung at a woman. But she did not seem ashamed. She wielded the word like a sword, slicing away all his preconceptions of who she was. She had earned her living by her sex, and she did not seem to regret it.
Robin Hobb
#25. It's as if our girls don't understand that they can be recognized for other things
their goals, their brains. Not just their bodies.
Siobhan Vivian
#26. It takes a near act of rebellion for even a four-year-old to break away from society's expectations.
Sheryl Sandberg
#27. I find it strange that practicing law in a comfortable well-heated office is considered too demanding an occupation for women, yet laboring from dawn's first light in crowded, drafty, ill-lit sweatshops is not.
Shirley Tallman
#28. I think that's when I understood that you only ruined my life because my life needed ruining. Because the life you rejected demanded that I spend all my time telling my daughter to be less and my son to be more.
Courtney Milan
#29. When a guy writes a scene where a woman does a deviant sex act on camera, it's objectifying. But when a woman writes it, it's feminism.
Whitney Cummings
#30. Every human body has its optimum weight and contour, which only health and efficiency can establish. Whenever we treat women's bodies as aesthetic objects without function we deform them.
Germaine Greer
#31. To slur "feminism" into "humanism" is to usurp women's voices once again, to make the singular feminine into the so-called universal masculine.
Gina Barreca
#32. The key in terms of mental ability is chess. There's never been a woman Grand Master chess player. Once you get one, then I'll buy some of the feminism ...
Pat Robertson
#33. ou know chicks before dicks. Never choose a guy over a friend. It's one of the most important rules of feminism.
Rosalind Wiseman
#34. Pregnancy and childbirth are not only physical and medical experiences, after all. They are also social experiences that, in modern America, just as when abortion was criminalized in the 1870s, serve to restrict women's ability to participate in society on equal footing with men.
Katha Pollitt
#35. But let's be real: feminism has mostly worked hard for those things for white women, and that is one of the main reasons why it gets its wig snatched so often. A
Luvvie Ajayi
#36. Identifying feminism as women's enemy only furthers the ends of a backlash against women's equality, simultaneously deflecting attention from the backlash's central role and recruiting women to attack their own cause. Some
Susan Faludi
#37. In early 1970, Newsweek's editors decided that the new women's liberation movement deserved a cover story. There was one problem, however: there were no women to write the piece.
Lynn Povich
#38. I hate men who are afraid of women's strength.
Anais Nin
#39. The anti-feminism bacllash has been set off not by women's achievement of full equality but by the increased possibility that they might win it. It is a pre-emptive strike that stops women long before they reach the finishing line.
Susan Faludi
#40. Feminism rotates between backlash and interest. And the cool thing about the Internet is that it's allowing women more access to their own history. Part of the problem before the Internet was that we didn't know which books to read. Someone had to tell you.
Kathleen Hanna
#41. Feminism is not inherently bourgeois, but bourgeois feminism is the only one given voice in our society. That is why women's issues discuss glass ceilings rather than dirt floors.
James Rozoff
#42. Feminism is something you do. It's a verb. It's what you are. It's an activity; it's something you're actively engaged in.
Kathleen Hanna
#43. Ironically, the worship of of death as a strategy for coping with our underlying fear of death's power does not truly give us solace. It is deeply anxiety producing. The more we watch spectacles of death, of random violence and cruelty, the more afraid we become in our daily lives.
Bell Hooks
#44. Why couldn't a girl take over the kingdom? I dunno. It's stupid, but that's how it was.
Rick Riordan
#45. I'm speaking for a bunch of girls when I say that the idea that feminism is completely natural and shouldn't even be something that people find mildly surprising, it's just a part of being a girl in 2013.
Lorde
#46. It's difficult to see the glass ceiling because it's made of glass. Virtually invisible. What we need is for more birds to fly above it and shit all over it, so we can see it properly.
Caitlin Moran
#49. Feminism is not a one size fits all kinda thing but anyone can wear it.
Jess
#50. Despite all of the social advances in women's rights and the push for gender equality in the workplace, it seems like modern men still want a woman that they can take care of at home.
Shannon Mullen
#52. This condition in which women live is created out of, and defended by, a system of ideas represented by the world's religions, by psychoanalysis, by pornography, by sexology, by science and medicine and the social sciences.
Sheila Jeffreys
#53. When you say you're not a feminist, if feminism hadn't existed, and you didn't live in a feminist world, you wouldn't be saying that, because you'd be too busy scrubbing out the toilets in back while cooking up your husband's tea and dying in childbirth at the age of 34.
Caitlin Moran
#54. The outrageous madonna/whore duality that we mock in Women's Studies 101 has its subtle, and very insidious, expression in the good/bad mother paradigm that we grapple with every day of our lives.
Shannon Drury
#55. Power has always been held by those who manage to controls the origins of life by controlling woman's bodies.
Jenny Nordberg
#56. The trade unions in the UK are campaigning around zero-hours contracts, which isn't about feminism, but it's a feminist issue. Women are affected by zero-hours contracts, and the recession has and is affecting women more than men.
Rachel Holmes
#57. Aristotle didn't have a problem with abortion," she says.
"Oh, well, good, that's a comfort," I say.
Deborah Meyler
#58. As the prevailing voices in the public spotlight are predominantly men, stepping into the spotlight with the truth of who you are as a woman is political change.
Tabby Biddle
#59. Iranian women are very consciously aware of gender-explicit oppression. Therefore: with so much more at stake, Iranian women have each other's back: on the street, in stores, at celebrations, everywhere.
Inga Muscio
#60. You might be thinking who is this Harry Potter girl? And what is she doing up on stage at the UN. It's a good question and trust me I have been asking myself the same thing. I don't know if I am qualified to be here. All I know is that I care about this problem. And I want to make it better.
Emma Watson
#61. The feminist revolution had to be fought because women quite simply were stopped at a state of evolution far short of their human capacity.
Betty Friedan
#62. To cherish my purity and set boundaries are, in my opinion, the highest forms of feminism - a woman who saves her body proves she is strong and secure enough to resist the men who seek to claim her, that she's more than what lies between her legs.
Caroline George
#63. Nearly a half-century on from feminism, simply being a woman artist is still a revolutionary act. And getting one's work shown continues to be met by enormous inbuilt resistance.
Jerry Saltz
#64. French existentialism is an unhelpful philosophy in which to couch modern feminism: born from the ravages of the Second World War, it is a cynical, individualistic school of thought that posits the self and personal choice as the measure of life's entire meaning.
Naomi Wolf
#65. We view men's gifts as vital to the church. In contrast, we caution women to exercise their gifts discreetly to avoid causing problems or trespassing some invisible line - which changes location from church to church, sometimes even within the same denomination.
Carolyn Custis James
#66. Real feminism is spinsterhood. It's time America admitted that old maids give all women a good name.
Florence King
#67. Feminism is just an idea. It's a philosophy. It's about the equality of women in all realms. It's not about man-hating. It's not about being humorless. We have to let go of these misconceptions that have plagued feminism for 40, 50 years.
Roxane Gay
#68. Anytime there's a bad female stand-up somewhere, some dickhead Interblogger will deduce that "women aren't funny." Using that same math, I can state: Male comedy writers piss in cups.
Tina Fey
#69. Some women have become far too proscriptive of other women's pleasures and private arrangements, and the definition of feminism has become ideologically overloaded.
Naomi Wolf
#70. There's no fuzzy middle ground. You either believe that women are people or you don't. It's that simple.
Joss Whedon
#71. There is a need for promoting women's sexual agency in today's society, because if it wasn't an issue, terms such as 'female sexual empowerment' would be made redundant. The fact that we merely have this vocabulary is indicative of that.
Miya Yamanouchi
#72. Reproductive freedom is critical to a whole range of issues. If we can't take charge of this most personal aspect of our lives, we can't take care of anything. It should not be seen as a privilege or as a benefit, but a fundamental human right.
Faye Wattleton
#73. It's more that they think about sexism in the same way people in London must think about bad weather: It's an omnipresent and unpleasant fact of life, but it shouldn't keep you from going about your business.
Hanna Rosin
#74. When men are oppressed, it's a tragedy. When women are oppressed, it's tradition.
Letty Cottin Pogrebin
#75. We will not let ourselves be intimidated by the number and violence of attacks against women; nor be fooled by the self-serving praise showered on the "real woman"; nor be won over by men's enthusiasm for her destiny, a destiny they would not for the world want to share.
Simone De Beauvoir
#76. I'd refer to myself as a feminist. I don't think my music is overtly rooted in feminism. I'm a teenager, and 95 percent of my friends are boys, and that's just the way I've always been.
Lorde
#77. It says a lot about Sandberg's brand of feminism that this campaign focuses on policing language rather than bringing attention to important issues that have real impact on women and girls
Jessica Roy
#78. When men imagine a female uprising, they imagine a world in which women rule men as men have ruled women.
Sally Kempton
#79. In our culture it is a woman's body which is considered important while it is a man's mind or his activities which are valued. A woman is sexy. A man is successful.
Alleen Pace Nilsen
#80. Women's bodies do not give up their babies so easily, and so silently, is the message. The heart will always remember.
Caitlin Moran
#81. As a concept [androgyny] raise[s] anxiety levels by conjuring up a conformist, unisex vision, the very opposite of the individuality and uniqueness that feminism actually has in mind.
Gloria Steinem
#82. Feminism is not a fad. It's not like Angry Birds. Although it does involve a lot of angry birds. Bad example.
Bridget Christie
#83. In this candid and rounded memoir, Baksi answers the questions a multitude of Larsson's fans have already asked about his upbringing; the recurring death threats; his insomnia and his vices; his feminism
Stieg Larsson
#84. Each time a woman stands up for herself, without knowing it possibly, without claiming it, she stands up for all women.
Maya Angelou
#85. There's nothing a man can do, that i can't do better and in heels
Ginger Rogers
#86. I hate to say it, but all that stuff they try to tell you about women being empowered and how it's fine for a woman to ask a man out, well, it's crap.'
I look down at my watch. 'Seven fifty-three p.m.'
'What does that mean?'
'Official time of death of feminism,' I reply, and mom laughs.
Robin Epstein
#87. We think of feminism as an academic subject, but it's not. If you think feminism is academic, you think there's a right or wrong.
Caitlin Moran
#88. There are two important days in a woman's life: the day she is born and the day she finds out why.
Terry Tempest Williams
#89. Feminist humor raises consciousness. And the reason it's funny is because it stands something on its head. Goodness knows you've got to have a sense of humor if you do feminism full-time, I tell you.
Eleanor Smeal
#90. But there's something missing in them, even the nice ones. It's like they're permanently absent-minded, like that can't quite remember who they are.
Margaret Atwood
#91. Psychologically, Japanese women depend largely on each other. In their sex-segregated society, they could be criticized for living in a female ghetto, and yet they have what some American feminists are trying to build, a "women's culture" with its own customs, values and even language.
Kittredge Cherry
#92. Until woman as she is can drive this plastic spectre out of her own and her man's imagination she will continue to apologize and disguise herself, while accepting her male's pot-belly, wattles, bad breath, farting, stubble, baldness and other ugliness without complaint.
Germaine Greer
#93. Men tend to treat women as fragile creatures, but our bodies were built to withstand pain and hard work, think with profound insight. We were created to do what men can't. And if that isn't reason enough for us to be treated equal, I'm not sure what is.
Caroline George
#94. I consider myself a feminist because I believe women should have equal rights. Of course. It's just that the term 'feminism' conjures up other things for people.
Marina And The Diamonds
#95. The word feminism has become synonymous with man-hating when in fact it has more to do with women than men.
Aysha Taryam
#96. Men should think twice before making widowhood women's only path to power.
Gloria Steinem
#98. Of course women's walking is often construed as performance rather than transport, with the implication that women walk not to see but to be seen, not for their own experience but for that of a male audience, which means that they are asking for whatever attention they receive.
Rebecca Solnit
#99. A feminist is a person who answers 'yes' to the question 'Are women human?' Feminism is not about whether women are better than, worse than or identical with men ... It's about justice, fairness, and access to the broad range of human experience.
Katha Pollitt
#100. I think feminism has always been global. I think there's feminism everywhere throughout the world.
Jessica Valenti
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