Deborah > Deborah's Quotes

“If you find yourself drawn to an event against all logic, go. The universe is telling you something.”
― Gloria Steinem, My Life on the Road

“Each others' lives are our best textbooks.”
― Gloria Steinem

“The art of life is not controlling what happens to us, but using what happens to us”
― Gloria Steinem

“A lot of my generation are living out the un-lived lives of our mothers.”
― Gloria Steinem

“Happy or Unhappy, families are all mysterious. ”
― Gloria Steinem

“If you want people to listen to you, you have to listen to them. If you hope people will change how they live, you have to know how they live. If you want people to see you, you have to sit down with them eye-to-eye.”
― Gloria Steinem, My Life on the Road

“When the past dies, there is mourning, but when the future dies our imaginations are compelled to carry it on.”
― Gloria Steinem, Marilyn

“However sugarcoated and ambiguous, every form of authoritarianism must
start with a belief in some group's greater right to power, whether that
right is justified by sex, race, class, religion or all four. However
far it may expand, the progression inevitably rests on unequal power
and airtight roles within the family.”
― Gloria Steinem

“Not even in a movie had I ever seen a wife with a journey of her own. Marriage was always the happy end, not the beginning. It was the 1950s, and I confused growing up with settling down.”
― Gloria Steinem, My Life on the Road

“Before she leaves, my new friend tells me to look out of the big picture window at the parking lot.

"See that purple Harley out there—that big gorgeous one? That's mine. I used to ride behind my husband, and never took the road on my own. Then after the kids were grown, I put my foot down. It was hard, but we finally got to be partners. Now he says he likes it better this way. He doesn't have to worry about his bike breaking down or getting a heart attach and totaling us both. I even put 'Ms.' on my license plate—and you should see my grandkids' faces when Grandma rides up on her purple Harley!"

On my own again, I look out at the barren sand and tortured rocks of the Badlands, stretching for miles. I've walked there, and I know that, close up, the barren sand reveals layers of pale rose and beige and cream, and the rocks turn out to have intricate womblike openings. Even in the distant cliffs, caves of rescue appear.

What seems to be one thing from a distance is very different close up.

I tell you this story because it's the kind of lesson that can be learned only on the road. And also because I've come to believe that, inside, each of us has a purple motorcycle.

We have only to discover it—and ride.”
― Gloria Steinem, My Life on the Road

“Only food and water are more important than music and privacy,”
― Gloria Steinem, My Life on the Road

“We are all trained to be female impersonators.”
― Gloria Steinem

“Anyone who believes we’re living in a postfeminist age will learn that violence against females—from female infanticide and child marriage to honor killings and sex trafficking—has now produced a world with fewer females than males, a first in recorded history.”
― Gloria Steinem, My Life on the Road

“The root of oppression is the loss of memory.”
― Gloria Steinem, My Life on the Road

“We are so different, yet so much the same.”
― Gloria Steinem, My Life on the Road

“Perhaps our need to escape into media is a misplaced desire for the journey.”
― Gloria Steinem, My Life on the Road

“I was angry because young men in politics were treated like rising stars and young women were treated like - well - young women. {...}
I was angry about the human talent that was lost just because it was born into a female body, and the mediocrity that was rewarded because it was born into a male one.”
― Gloria Steinem, My Life on the Road

“I can go on the road - because I can come home. I come home - because I'm free to leave. Each way of being is more valued in the presence of the other.”
― Gloria Steinem, My Life on the Road

“Perhaps the most revolutionary act for a woman will be a self-willed journey—and to be welcomed when she comes home.”
― Gloria Steinem, My Life on the Road

“I worshipped dead men for their strength, forgetting I was strong.”
― Gloria Steinem, My Life on the Road

“Dreaming, after all, is a form of planning.”
― Gloria Steinem

“Feminism is memory.”
― Gloria Steinem, My Life on the Road

“The word 'still' has entered my life. People say to me, 'You're still traveling, you're still wearing blue jeans.”
― Gloria Steinem

“Laughter is the only free emotion - the only one that can't be compelled. We can be made to fear. We can even be made to believe we're in love because, if we're kept dependent and isolated for long enough, we bond in order to survive. But laughter explodes like an aha! It comes when the punch line changes everything that has gone before, when two opposites collide and make a third and when we suddenly see a new reality...laughter is an orgasm of the mind.”
― Gloria Steinem, My Life on the Road

“Laughter is an orgasm of the mind.”
― Gloria Steinem

“A writer’s greatest reward is naming something unnamed that many people are feeling. A writer’s greatest punishment is being misunderstood. The same words can do both.”
― Gloria Steinem, My Life on the Road

“If someone called me a lesbian—in those days all single feminists were assumed to be lesbians—I learned just to say, “Thank you.” It disclosed nothing, confused the accuser, conveyed solidarity with women who were lesbians, and made the audience laugh.”
― Gloria Steinem, My Life on the Road

“Wherever I go, bookstores are still the closest thing to a town square.”
― Gloria Steinem, My Life on the Road

“I could leave—because I could return. I could return—because I knew adventure lay just beyond an open door. Instead of either/or, I discovered a whole world of and.”
― Gloria Steinem, My Life on the Road

“If you travel long enough, every story becomes a novel.”
― Gloria Steinem, My Life on the Road