Abigail Adams:

If particular care and attention is not paid to the ladies, we are determined to foment a rebellion, and will not hold ourselves bound by any laws in which we have no voice or representation.

Anna Quindlen:

It's important to remember that feminism is no longer a group of organizations or leaders. It's the expectations that parents have for their daughters, and their sons, too. It's the way we talk about and treat one another. It's who makes the money and who makes the compromises and who makes the dinner. It's a state of mind. It's the way we live now.

Barbara Strickland:

What I am proud of, what seems so simply clear, is that feminism is a way to fight for justice, always in short supply.

Bella Abzug:

Our struggle today is not to have a female Einstein get appointed as an assistant professor. It is for a woman schlemiel to get as quickly promoted as a male schlemiel.

Betty Friedan:

It is easier to live through someone else than to become complete yourself.

The Feminine Mystique, 1963

Betty Friedan:

If divorce has increased by one thousand percent, don't blame the women's movement. Blame the obsolete sex roles on which our marriages were based.

speech, New York City, January 20, 1974

Elaine Heffner:

Women do not have to sacrifice personhood if they are mothers. They do not have to sacrifice motherhood in order to be persons. Liberation was meant to expand women's opportunities, not to limit them. The self-esteem that has been found in new pursuits can also be found in mothering.

Erma Bombeck:

We've got a generation now who were born with semiequality. They don't know how it was before, so they think, this isn't too bad. We're working. We have our attache' cases and our three piece suits. I get very disgusted with the younger generation of women. We had a torch to pass, and they are just sitting there. They don't realize it can be taken away. Things are going to have to get worse before they join in fighting the battle.

Faith Whittlesey:

Remember, Ginger Rogers did everything Fred Astaire did, but she did it backwards and in high heels.

Gloria Steinem:

Any woman who chooses to behave like a full human being should be warned that the armies of the status quo will treat her as something of a dirty joke. That's their natural and first weapon. She will need her sisterhood.

Gloria Steinem:

This is no simple reform. It really is a revolution. Sex and race because they are easy and visible differences have been the primary ways of organizing human beings into superior and inferior groups and into the cheap labour in which this system still depends. We are talking about a society in which there will be no roles other than those chosen or those earned. We are really talking about humanism.

Jane Galvin Lewis:

You don't have to be anti-man to be pro-woman.

Lillian Hellman:

No one can argue any longer about the rights of women. It's like arguing about earthquakes.

Lya Sorano:

When we talk about equal pay for equal work, women in the workplace are beginning to catch up. If we keep going at this current rate, we will achieve full equality in about 475 years. I don't know about you, but I can't wait that long.

Margaret Atwood:

Does feminist mean large unpleasant person who'll shout at you or someone who believes women are human beings. To me it's the latter, so I sign up.

Marlo Thomas:

One of the things about equality is not just that you be treated equally to a man, but that you treat yourself equally to the way you treat a man.

Mary Wollstonecraft:

Women are systematically degraded by receiving the trivial attentions which men think it manly to pay to the sex, when, in fact, men are insultingly supporting their own superiority.

Maureen Reagan:

I will feel equality has arrived when we can elect to office women who are as incompetent as some of the men who are already there.

Michele Le Doeuff:

A feminist is a woman who does not allow anyone to think in her place.

Nancy Astor:

No one sex can govern alone. I believe that one of the reasons why civilization has failed so lamentably is that is had one-sided government.

Pamela Anderson:

What I know in life runs the gamut of the "feminist experience." The true meaning of feminism is this: to use your strong womanly image to gain strong results in society.

Pearl S. Buck:

The basic discovery about any people is the discovery of the relationship between its men and its women.

Rebecca West:

I myself have never been able to find out precisely what feminism is: I only know that people call me a feminist whenever I express sentiments that differentiate me from a doormat, or a prostitute.

1913

Rita Mae Brown:

Any woman whose I.Q. hovers above her body temperature must be a feminist.

Susan B. Anthony:

Men, their rights, and nothing more; women, their rights, and nothing less.

Susan B. Anthony:

It was we, the people; not we, the white male citizens; nor yet we, the male citizens; but we, the whole people, who formed the Union.