Elissa > Elissa's Quotes

“You educate a man; you educate a man. You educate a woman; you educate a generation.”
― Brigham Young

“I hate to hear you talk about all women as if they were fine ladies instead of rational creatures. None of us want to be in calm waters all our lives.”
― Jane Austen, Persuasion

“A woman without a man is like a fish without a bicycle.”
― Irina Dunn

“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.”
― Rebecca West

“Feminism is the radical notion that women are human beings.”
― Cheris Kramarae

“I hate men who are afraid of women's strength.”
― Anaïs Nin, Henry and June: The Unexpurgated Diary of Anaïs Nin, 1931-1932

“I am too intelligent, too demanding, and too resourceful for anyone to be able to take charge of me entirely. No one knows me or loves me completely. I have only myself”
― Simone de Beauvoir

“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.”
― Doris Lessing, The Golden Notebook

“Men are afraid that women will laugh at them. Women are afraid that men will kill them.”
― Margaret Atwood

“The thing women have yet to learn is nobody gives you power. You just take it. ”
― Roseanne Barr

“Men are from Earth, women are from Earth. Deal with it.”
― George Carlin

“A feminist is anyone who recognizes the equality and full humanity of women and men.”
― Gloria Steinem

“What feminism means for me is simply that women, like men, are complete human beings with limitless possibilities.”
― Fahmida Riaz

“It's not my responsibility to be beautiful. I'm not alive for that purpose. My existence is not about how desirable you find me.”
― Warsan Shire

“She is free in her wildness, she is a wanderess, a drop of free water. She knows nothing of borders and cares nothing for rules or customs. 'Time' for her isn’t something to fight against. Her life flows clean, with passion, like fresh water.”
― Roman Payne

“As long as she thinks of a man, nobody objects to a woman thinking.”
― Virginia Woolf, Orlando

“He - and if there is a God, I am convinced he is a he, because no woman could or would ever fuck things up this badly.”
― George Carlin

“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.”
― Abigail Adams, The Letters of John and Abigail Adams

“She was free in her wildness. She was a wanderess, a drop of free water. She belonged to no man and to no city”
― Roman Payne, The Wanderess

“There is a special place in hell for women who don't help other women."

(Keynote speech at Celebrating Inspiration luncheon with the WNBA's All-Decade Team, 2006)”
― Madeleine Albright

“Equality is not a concept. It's not something we should be striving for. It's a necessity. Equality is like gravity. We need it to stand on this earth as men and women, and the misogyny that is in every culture is not a true part of the human condition. It is life out of balance, and that imbalance is sucking something out of the soul of every man and woman who's confronted with it. We need equality. Kinda now.”
― Joss Whedon

“To terrify children with the image of hell, to consider women an inferior creation—is that good for the world?”
― Christopher Hitchens

“She talks like you. It’s not every day you hear a four-year-old say Prince Charming is a douchebag who’s only holding Cinderella back.”

"That’s my girl.”
― Emma Chase, Tangled

“We teach girls to shrink themselves, to make themselves smaller. We say to girls, you can have ambition, but not too much. You should aim to be successful, but not too successful. Otherwise, you would threaten the man. Because I am female, I am expected to aspire to marriage. I am expected to make my life choices always keeping in mind that marriage is the most important. Now marriage can be a source of joy and love and mutual support but why do we teach girls to aspire to marriage and we don’t teach boys the same? We raise girls to see each other as competitors not for jobs or accomplishments, which I think can be a good thing, but for the attention of men. We teach girls that they cannot be sexual beings in the way that boys are.”
― Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, We Should All Be Feminists

“You must give everything to make your life as beautiful as the dreams that dance in your imagination.”
― Roman Payne

“He is a gentleman, and I am a gentleman's daughter. So far we are equal.”
― Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

“Wherever you find a great man, you will find a great mother or a great wife standing behind him -- or so they used to say. It would be interesting to know how many great women have had great fathers and husbands behind them.”
― Dorothy L. Sayers, Gaudy Night

“One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman.”
― Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex

“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.”
― Rebecca West, The Young Rebecca: Writings, 1911-1917

“We need to reclaim the word 'feminism'. We need the word 'feminism' back real bad. When statistics come in saying that only 29% of American women would describe themselves as feminist - and only 42% of British women - I used to think, What do you think feminism IS, ladies? What part of 'liberation for women' is not for you? Is it freedom to vote? The right not to be owned by the man you marry? The campaign for equal pay? 'Vogue' by Madonna? Jeans? Did all that good shit GET ON YOUR NERVES? Or were you just DRUNK AT THE TIME OF THE SURVEY?”
― Caitlin Moran, How to Be a Woman