Annamarie > Annamarie's Quotes

“The most courageous act is still to think for yourself. Aloud.”
― Coco Chanel

“When a man gives his opinion, he's a man. When a woman gives her opinion, she's a bitch.”
― Bette Davis

“You are the Worst Kind of Animal. A Butcher by Day and a Pussy Cat by Night.”
― Monroe Ariel, Her OutSpoken Lips: A Collection of Poems Through the Eyes of a Woman Pushed to the Edge Part II

“What good are words if no one believes them?”
― Rachel L. Schade, Silent Kingdom

“I think silence is one of the failures of people today. When they see an injustice or intolerance, and they stay silent - that's the worst thing.”
― Anonymous

“Sometimes Truth cannot be silenced.”
― Rachel L. Schade, Silent Kingdom

“I think it's important that scared gay kids who aren't out yet see hate speech challenged.”
― J.K. Rowling

“Young children begin very early to internalize information that either encourages or discourages self-disclosure. Cues are intuitively understood. Most of what we feel is unexamined and articulated. Cultural norms are unwittingly absorbed. We learn when to speak and when to stay silent. - Pam MacRae (Ch. 2)”
― Rosalie De Rosset, Unseduced and Unshaken: The Place of Dignity in a Woman's Choices

“Yes, you can make a difference! You can speak on behalf of those who are voiceless.”
― E.N. Supen, Turning Point

“And even when they refuse to listen, I'll keep talking anyway, hoping on a slim chance that the things inside my head are worth something to someone.”
― Nadège Richards, 5 Miles

“Let them hear your voice so rarely that a simply-uttered word creates a hush of expectancy in the room.”
― Richelle E. Goodrich, Smile Anyway: Quotes, Verse, & Grumblings for Every Day of the Year

“In the end, it was the secrets that held me hostage and fuelled my depression, but, once released, emancipation - from fear, shame, guilt and judgement - was finally possible.”
― B.G. Bowers, Death and Life

“I write to say what I cannot speak”
― Ben Mitchell

“...it only takes one voice, at the right pitch, to start an avalanche.”
― Dianna Hardy, Return of the Wolf

“I felt like I needed to comfort both the little girl inside me and my mother, assuring them that neither of them could have prevented the rape. I didn't want my mother to blame herself and I didn't want to blame the little girl inside of me for not speaking up at the age of six.”
― Erin Merryn, Living for Today: From Incest and Molestation to Fearlessness and Forgiveness

“WHAT ARE THE CONSEQUENCES when we go against our instincts? What are the consequences of not speaking out? What are the consequences of guilt, shame, and doubt?”
― Terry Tempest Williams, When Women Were Birds: Fifty-four Variations on Voice

“I was going to die, sooner or later, whether or not I had even spoken myself. My silences had not protected me. Your silences will not protect you.... What are the words you do not yet have? What are the tyrannies you swallow day by day and attempt to make your own, until you will sicken and die of them, still in silence? We have been socialized to respect fear more than our own need for language."

I began to ask each time: "What's the worst that could happen to me if I tell this truth?" Unlike women in other countries, our breaking silence is unlikely to have us jailed, "disappeared" or run off the road at night. Our speaking out will irritate some people, get us called bitchy or hypersensitive and disrupt some dinner parties. And then our speaking out will permit other women to speak, until laws are changed and lives are saved and the world is altered forever.

Next time, ask: What's the worst that will happen? Then push yourself a little further than you dare. Once you start to speak, people will yell at you. They will interrupt you, put you down and suggest it's personal. And the world won't end.

And the speaking will get easier and easier. And you will find you have fallen in love with your own vision, which you may never have realized you had. And you will lose some friends and lovers, and realize you don't miss them. And new ones will find you and cherish you. And you will still flirt and paint your nails, dress up and party, because, as I think Emma Goldman said, "If I can't dance, I don't want to be part of your revolution." And at last you'll know with surpassing certainty that only one thing is more frightening than speaking your truth. And that is not speaking.”
― Audre Lorde