Women Feminist Quotes

#1. As long as women are using class or race power to dominate other women, feminist sisterhood cannot be fully realized.

Bell Hooks

#2. I am an adamant feminist. It never occurred to me to take my husband's name when we married. I am a supporter of abortion rights, of equal pay for equal work, of the rights of women prisoners, of all the time-honored feminist causes, and then some.

Ayelet Waldman

#3. Men are scumbags until they prove they're women.

Robin Mellom

#4. I am a feminist, and I didn't think women would accept a throwback heroine.

Linda Woolverton

#5. 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

#6. We live, I am trying to say, in an epidemic of male violence against women.

Katha Pollitt

#7. You hear younger women say, 'I don't believe I'm a feminist. I believe women should have equal right and I believe in fighting for the rights of other women, but I'm certainly not a feminist. No, no, not that!' It's just a word. If you called it 'Fred' would it be better?

Gail Collins

#8. I am a feminist because in every woman I can see reflection of my mother.

Debasish Mridha

#9. I've thought often about why - why?! - anyone, especially other women, would try to disrupt feminist work that combats violence. What in the world could be the point of that? The only reason I've come up with, and I think it makes sense, is fear of becoming that "impure" woman.

Jessica Valenti

#10. Our religion has defined a position for women (in society): motherhood. Some people can understand this, while others can't. You cannot explain this to feminists because they don't accept the concept of motherhood.

Recep Tayyip Erdogan

#11. Feminism...is not 'women as victims' but women refusing to be victims.

Gloria Steinem

#12. I respect women like Gloria Steinem who paved the way. But when you say 'feminist' now, there is a message that if you are sexy and you acknowledge that part of your personality publicly, then it's somehow an affront to women. And I reject that.

Megyn Kelly

#13. 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

#14. Great minds may have cold hearts. Form but no color. It is an incompleteness. And so they are afraid of any woman who both thinks and feels deeply.

Sena Jeter Naslund

#15. A feminist is a man or woman who already knows for a fact that men and women are qual and wants society to wake up to that fact, so the world can stop operating at half-strength.

Marlo Thomas

#16. My mom brought me up to be a feminist. She would always point out to my brother and me that our culture does often portray women like objects.

Joseph Gordon-Levitt

#17. I just like to have words that describe things correctly. Now to me, 'black feminist' does not do that. I need a word that is organic, that really comes out of the culture, that really expresses the spirit that we see in black women. And it's just ... womanish.

Alice Walker

#18. Open marriage' is an invention of a feminist era. The idea is to have a marriage where dalliances are tolerated or even encouraged for both men and women, or in some combination where both partners are getting something out of it.

Amanda Marcotte

#19. Feminism is not a one size fits all kinda thing but anyone can wear it.

Jess

#20. I adhere to the law of chastity because I don't believe in pushing women. That's what it means to be a man. I don't hurt others simply to make myself feel superior. Gossip can ruin a woman as surely as unchaste behavior. True men don't indulge in either. We don't need to.

Courtney Milan

#21. The feminist movement taught women to see themselves as victims of an oppressive patriarchy ... Self-imposed victimhood is not a recipe for happiness.

Phyllis Schlafly

#22. 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

#23. I'm not a feminist,' some women say sternly as they march off to work where equal opportunity legislation protects them ... Women who say they are not feminists and act like individuals with basic human rights have just got their terminology wrong.

Kaz Cooke

#24. Men have sacrificed and crippled themselves physically and emotionally to feed, house, and protect women and children. None of their pain or achievement is registered in feminist rhetoric, which portrays men as oppressive and callous exploiters.

Camille Paglia

#25. Without confronting internalized sexism women
who picked up the feminist banner often betrayed the cause in their
interactions with other women.

Bell Hooks

#26. To most middle-class feminists, as to most middle-class non-feminists, working-class women remain mysterious creatures to be "reached out to" in some abstract way. No connection. No solidarity.

Irena Klepfisz

#27. Putting women in military combat is the cutting edge of the feminist goal to force us into an androgynous society.

Phyllis Schlafly

#28. Madonna is the true feminist. She exposes the puritanism and suffocating ideology of American feminism, which is stuck in an adolescent whining mode. Madonna has taught young women to be fully female and sexual while still exercising control over their lives.

Camille Paglia

#29. 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

#30. I'm a bit of a feminist and I carry a machete! (Laughs) I try to be a strong female. I think it's important. My mum is my idol in life. She's a very strong woman. I think it's important for women to be strong and intelligent and hold their own.

Kaya Scodelario

#31. I like women who look like women. I hated grunge. No one's more feminist than me, but you don't have to look as if you don't give a - you know. You can be smart, bright, and attractive aesthetically to others - and to yourself.

Catherine Zeta-Jones

#32. When the Taliban took over in 1996, the news of their crimes hit the Toronto papers. As a feminist and as an anti-war activist, I heard about what was happening to women, and I wanted to do something to support those folks.

Deborah Ellis

#33. Womanists is what black feminists used to call themselves. Very much so. They were not the same thing. And also the relationship with men. Historically, black women have always sheltered their men because they were out there, and they were the ones that were most likely to be killed.

Toni Morrison

#34. I mean, I absolutely call myself a feminist. And by that, I mean a woman who believes that your opportunities should not be constrained by your gender, that women should be entitled to the same opportunities as men.

Ayelet Waldman

#35. 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

#36. The most alluring thing a woman can have is confidence.

Beyonce Knowles

#37. I think one of the primary reasons young women don't identify as feminist is because they don't know any feminists and/or don't really have an accurate or comprehensive understanding of what it is - by proudly identifying as a feminist.

Julie Zeilinger

#38. A feminist is anyone who recognizes the equality and full humanity of women and men.

Gloria Steinem

#39. 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

#40. For what is done or learned by one class of women becomes, by virtue of their common womanhood, the property of all women.

Elizabeth Blackwell

#41. The radical feminists succeeded in undermining the traditional family and convincing women that professional accomplishments are the key to happiness.

Rick Santorum

#42. Patriarchy is women structuring lifelong decisions around men they haven't met.

Maggie Young

#43. But the true feminist deals out of a lesbian consciousness whether or not she ever sleeps with women.

Audre Lorde

#44. It takes more than balls to be a woman. It takes ovaries.

Solange Nicole

#45. I was challenged to a fistfight by Margo Jefferson, the Pulitzer Prize winner, New York Times writer, who is part of a feminist clique at the Times, which believes that Black men are the principal threat to the women of the world.

Ishmael Reed

#46. Don't tell me I'm "too tall" just because my height happens to threaten your rather fragile sense of masculinity. The fact that men cannot look down upon women who are taller than them is the very reason that many men find tall women so intimidating.

Miya Yamanouchi

#47. Women are "hypergamous." This means they seek men of higher status than themselves. Even the most ardent heterosexual feminist only can love someone more powerful than she. Needless to say the higher she rises, the slimmer the pickings.

Henry Makow

#48. In the same way that individual women are often underestimated, a movement of women is also understimated, but the truth is that, if people realize someone is willing to talk about these deep and daily concerns, they show up.

Gloria Steinem

#49. The feminist call was for women to embrace ways of seeing beauty and adorning ourselves that are healthy, life-affirming, and not overly time-time consuming.

Bell Hooks

#50. People say, 'Gee, you don't really do political music.' Well, I sing a lot of songs about how men and women and lovers treat each other, and none of us want to be talked down to or belittled or ignored or disrespected ... So I'm proud to be a feminist.

Bonnie Raitt

#51. I thought liberation had to do with going out into the world and assuming male duties, not with delegating part of my load. The result was a terrible fatigue, as witnessed today by the millions of women of my generation who question feminist movements.

Isabel Allende

#52. 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

#53. 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

#54. Women should have free access to every field of labor which they care to enter, and when their work is as valuable as that of a man it should be paid as highly.

Theodore Roosevelt

#55. A lady decidedly. Fast? perhaps. Original? undoubtedly. Worth knowing? rather.

George Egerton

#56. I was always a feminist, for I liked intellectual revolt as much as I disliked physical violence. On the whole, I think women havelost something precious, but have gained, immeasurably, by the passing of the old order.

Ellen Glasgow

#57. 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

#58. [David] Mamet is another hypocrite. His idea of Black man is a pimp who abuses women, [Edmond], yet his play Oleanna [1994] ends with a White professor slapping an uppity feminist, at least the version I saw at San Francisco's ACT.

Ishmael Reed

#59. ...women, brave as stars at dawn

Edwidge Danticat

#60. The most empowering feminist act is for women to be taught about the ways babies bond and then decide what they want to do.

Mayim Bialik

#61. Was shaking his head sadly as he spoke - was that I should never call myself a feminist since feminists are women who are unhappy because they cannot find husbands. So I decided to call myself a Happy Feminist.

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

#62. My hope is that feminist, racial justice, reproductive rights and LGBT movements build a coalition that centers on the lives of women who lead intersectional lives and too often fall in between the cracks of these narrow mission statements.

Janet Mock

#63. What is feminism? Simply the belief that women should be as free as men, however nuts, dim, deluded, badly dressed, fat, receding, lazy and smug they might be. Are you a feminist? Hahaha. Of course you are.

Caitlin Moran

#64. [There is a] depth and urgency of the search of Jewish and Christian women for connection to the Divine, which found expression in more than 1000 years of feminist Bible criticism and religious re-visioning.

Gerda Lerner

#65. I can be totally feminine and totally feminist. The two are not mutually exclusive.

PatriciaV. Davis

#66. In Pakistan, when we were stopped from going to school, at that time I realized that education ... Is the power for women, and that's why the terrorists are afraid of education

Malala Yousafzai

#67. Unlike furious thin-lipped feminists, I tend not to draw distinctions between men and women, apart from in bed where you really do need to spot the difference.

Jeremy Clarkson

#68. I do feel it's crucial that women's opinions be taken equally with men's. But still'I have not been accepted by the American white feminist writers and activists, and frankly I don't care to be, so I am a womanist. I am feisty and I am given to womanish behavior.

Kola Boof

#69. I'm a Christian. And until the day when the world automatically understands that to mean that I believe in the full humanity and personhood of both men and women, you can also call me a feminist.

Sarah Bessey

#70. Feminism is dead in the world. It comes from another time. I'm a feminist. I want to fight, but I don't see many people with this desire to fight for something. Women don't help each other, especially in fashion.

Donatella Versace

#71. The old lessons of submissiveness and fragility made us victims. Women are so much more than that. You can be a businesswoman, a mother, an artist, and a feminist - whatever you want to be - and still be a sexual being. It's not mutually exclusive.

Beyonce Knowles

#72. I'm more often confronted by women who come from religious traditions and don't feel that they have a place in the feminist movement. I've felt pressure when reporters asked me, "Do you believe in God?" I do say, "No. I believe in people."

Gloria Steinem

#73. We have allowed the sexual debate to be defined by women, and that's not right. Men must speak, and speak in their own voices, not voices coerced by feminist moralists.

Camille

#74. Families make possible the super-exploitation of women by training them to look upon their work outside the home as peripheral to their 'true' role.

Andrea Dworkin

#75. When I dare to be powerful, to use my strength in the service of my vision, then it becomes less and less important whether I am afraid.

Audre Lorde

#76. And with the rape, I was showing why the rape statistics are exaggerated, and saying that date rape was much more complex than the way feminists had portrayed it, as men oppressing women.

Warren Farrell

#77. We are strong and proud and beautiful and there are not enough stars in the night sky to measure our worth.
I will honor my mother and take care of my family.
Yes, I think. I am just a woman.

Kristen Simmons

#78. Today masses of black women in the U.S. refuse to acknowledge that they have much to gain by feminist struggle. They fear feminism. They have stood in place so long that they are afraid to move. They fear change. They fear losing what little they have.

Bell Hooks

#79. I voted for every woman who has to leave a baby too soon, who has to downgrade her career, or who is made to feel invisible in her role as a mother.

Erin Passons

#80. I don't know what a hard-ass feminist is. I'm a feminist, which only means that I think men and women deserve equal treatment. Hardly a groundbreaking concept. But I'm sure you're about to give an example of where I failed in that.

Kelley Armstrong

#81. When at 15, my girlfriends started dropping out of their beloved sports teams, because they didn't want to appear muscle-y, when at 18, my male friends were unable to express their feelings, I decided that I was a feminist.

Emma Watson

#82. I think of myself as a political idiot. Idiot, in ancient Greece, denoted a common person without access to knowledge and information--all women, by definition, and most men. I am unable to make judgments. I see no options I can identify with. Is that normal?

Jasmina Tesanovic

#83. Dear Girls Across the Globe,
Let's stop body-shaming each other with hurtful comments about how another girl looks or doesn't look. We are all beautiful in our own unique way; so let's speak about each other with the dignity that we would want others to have when they speak about us.

Miya Yamanouchi

#84. I feel the feminist movement has excluded black women. You cannot talk about being black and a woman within traditional feminist dialogue.

Katori Hall

#85. Postmodernism is an academic theory, originating in academia with an academic elite, not in the world of women and men, where feminist theory is rooted.

Catharine MacKinnon

#86. The war gave women like her opportunities, not a feminist movement, and if the opportunities dwindled after the war, she feels that it was because women didn't want them.

Rosalyn Sussman Yalow

#87. I am attempting to move away from the exclusionary practices of feminist theory, particularly anti-pornography rhetoric, in order to amplify the discussion about the complexity of pleasure for women.

Barbara Degenevieve

#88. Women can't wait for equal pay. And I won't stop fighting to address this inequality.

Barack Obama

#89. The feminist movement has far more anger for men than it has love for women.

Dennis Prager

#90. If you ask Muslim women why they cover up, ninety-nine percent of them will say it's to avoid arousing men. Fuck that, where's your self-accountability?

Michael Muhammad Knight

#91. Know that you matter, your thoughts and feelings matter, your sexual needs and wants matter, your sexual boundaries and sexual health matter. -That is the definition of sexual empowerment.

Miya Yamanouchi

#92. I'm a feminist because I believe in women ... it's a heavy word, feminism, but it's not one I think we should run from. I'm proud to be a feminist.

Sheryl Sandberg

#93. Let's forget about the mythical Jesus and look for encouragement, solace and inspiration from real women ... Two thousand years of patriarchal rule under the shadow of the cross ought to be enough to turn women toward the feminist 'salvation' of this world

Annie Laurie Gaylor

#94. I call myself a feminist. Isn't that what you call someone who fights for women's rights?

Dalai Lama

#95. If she did bitch-slap me, I'd bitch-slap her right back, but I resented the word bitch and all its familiar forms, as it was degrading to women and dogs everywhere.

G.G. Silverman

#96. My own definition is a feminist is a man or a woman who says, yes, there's a problem with gender as it is today and we must fix it, we must do better. All of us, women and men, must do better.

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

#97. I have always tried to be a woman who protects other women. I have a sister, I have daughters, I have girlfriends, and I was raised by a feminist mother.

Nicole Kidman

#98. I'm a feminist. I've always been in favor of women.

Carl Andre

#99. Remember that in the early days of the feminist movement, they refused to have a leader; different women would just stand up and speak. The early feminists were very careful to not put what was spontaneously arising back in the old bottle.

James Hillman

#100. I didn't go to high school, I didn't go to college, I didn't have women's studies. All of my feminist ideals and education have been built around art and my friends and community. And so it's still growing.

Kathleen Hanna