Having It All Quotes

“He tried to live a good life and devote that life to helping others, but he never thought the world would reward him for his efforts. Such a thought would be the ultimate in self-deluding self-aggrandizement, for why would the world care one iota about him? Now, however, he wondered if he had been wrong. Now, he thought that maybe, just maybe, if you lived a good life, the universe—this cold, cold world—might just reward you. And he did feel rewarded—rewarded beyond all the gold in the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan.”
― Ray Smith, The Magnolia That Bloomed Unseen

“I hate the phrase 'having it all,' because it demeans women who do stay home with their children, by implying that their lives are less than full. One of the main goals of the feminist movement is that all women should be able to make the best choices for themselves and their families, and no one should be belittled, degraded, or disregarded because of what she chooses to do.”
― Kirsten Gillibrand, Off the Sidelines: Raise Your Voice, Change the World

“Domineering-types may appear omnipotent but, inevitably, will smother everything they love and lose all.”
― Stewart Stafford

“There's only one thing worse than never having found love, and that's finding it and having it taken away from you - then you truly know what you've lost.”
― Stewart Stafford

“I’m selfish.
Selfish enough to want it all.
And I know if I don’t have you . . .
. . . I don’t have anything.”
― Katie Klein, Cross My Heart

“Shonda, how do you do it all?
The answer is this: I don't.
Whenever you see me somewhere succeeding in one area of my life, that almost certainly means I am failing in another area of my life....
That is the trade-off.
That is the Faustian bargain one makes with the devil that comes with being a powerful working woman who is also a powerful mother. You never feel 100 percent okay, you never get your sea legs, you are always a little nauseous.”
― Shonda Rhimes, Year of Yes

“So, please, let's stop talking about 'having it all' and start talking about the very real challenges of 'doing it all.' The old debate pits women against one another and distracts the conversation from what truly matters—figuring out how working mothers can get the support they need to achieve economic security and build better, happier, more-balanced lives.”
― Kirsten Gillibrand, Off the Sidelines: Raise Your Voice, Change the World

“Recently in America, we've fallen into a never-ending debate about whether women can 'have it all.' It's an absurd frame for many reasons. The first: For almost all mothers, earning money is a necessity, not a choice. Women work to provide for themselves and their children. We need to stop pretending that work is optional for all but the most financially secure American women.

Second: The word 'have' in that phrase drives me crazy. It sounds like women are being greedy, trying to finagle more than their fair share, more than they're due. This is preposterous.”
― Kirsten Gillibrand, Off the Sidelines: Raise Your Voice, Change the World

“The secret of having it all is loving it all.”
― Joyce Brothers

“When we combine very real workplace inequalities with these romantic opt-out stories, the idea that "having it all" is a laughable goal becomes enshrined as immutable truth. And when we portray opting out as a simple matter of "choice," we ignore the systematic problems that make combining work and motherhood so difficult.”
― Emily Matchar, Homeward Bound: Why Women are Embracing the New Domesticity

“To have both motherhood and work was to have two lives instead of one, was a stunning refinement of historical female experience, and to the people who complained that having it all meant doing it all I would have said, yes, of course it does. You don’t get ‘all’ for nothing. ‘Having it all’, like any form of success, requires hard work. It requires the adoption of the heroic mode of being. But the hero is solitary forever searching out the holy grail, her belief that she is exceptional perhaps only a disguise of the fact that she is essentially alone.”
― Rachel Cusk, Aftermath: On Marriage and Separation