Feminist Quotes

“The world was hers for the reading.”
― Betty Smith, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

“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

“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

“When I dare to be powerful, to use my strength in the service of my vision, then it becomes less and less important whether I am afraid.”
― Audre Lorde

“To call woman the weaker sex is a libel; it is man's injustice to woman. If by strength is meant brute strength, then, indeed, is woman less brute than man. If by strength is meant moral power, then woman is immeasurably man's superior. Has she not greater intuition, is she not more self-sacrificing, has she not greater powers of endurance, has she not greater courage? Without her, man could not be. If nonviolence is the law of our being, the future is with woman. Who can make a more effective appeal to the heart than woman?"

[To the Women of India (Young India, Oct. 4, 1930)]”
― Mahatma Gandhi

“Maybe the princess could save herself."
"That sounds like a pretty good story too.”
― Marissa Meyer, Fairest

“A culture fixated on female thinness is not an obsession about female beauty, but an obsession about female obedience. Dieting is the most potent political sedative in women’s history; a quietly mad population is a tractable one.”
― Naomi Wolf, The Beauty Myth

“We are becoming the men we wanted to marry”
― Gloria Steinem

“I would rather be a bad feminist than no feminist at all.”
― Roxane Gay, Bad Feminist

“I am a strong and powerful woman.
I am proud to be a woman and I celebrate the qualities that I have as a woman.
I am not defined by other people’s opinion of who I should be or what I should do as a woman. I determine that, not anyone else.
I am not passed up for a position, title, or promotion because I am a woman.
I fully deserve all the good things that comes my way.
Irrespective of what anyone might think, being a woman places no boundaries or limits on my abilities.
I can do anything I set my mind to.
I celebrate my womanhood and I am beautiful both inside and out.”
― idowu koyenikan, Wealth for All: Living a Life of Success at the Edge of Your Ability

“I am a strong and powerful woman.
I am proud to be a woman and I celebrate the qualities that I have as a woman.
I am not defined by other people’s opinion of who I should be or what I should do as a woman. I determine that, not anyone else.
I am not passed up for a position, title, or promotion because I am a woman.
I fully deserve all the good things that comes my way.
Irrespective of what anyone might think, being a woman places no boundaries or limits on my abilities.
I can do anything I set my mind to.
I celebrate my womanhood and I am beautiful both inside and out.”
― Idowu Koyenikan, Wealth for All: Living a Life of Success at the Edge of Your Ability

“A woman is human.

She is not better, wiser, stronger, more intelligent, more creative, or more responsible than a man.

Likewise, she is never less.

Equality is a given.

A woman is human.”
― Vera Nazarian, The Perpetual Calendar of Inspiration

“But the true feminist deals out of a lesbian consciousness whether or not she ever sleeps with women.”
― Audre Lorde

“Someday every woman will have orgasms- like every family has color TV- and we can all get on with the business of life. ”
― Erica Jong, How to Save Your Own Life

“I love how you still think if you tell me to do something, I'll just check my brain at the door and do it.”
― C.J. Redwine, Defiance

“I am confident, I am capable, and I will not wait to be rescued by a woodsman or a hunter.”
― Jackson Pearce, Sisters Red

“Great minds may have cold hearts. Form but no color. It is an incompleteness. And so they are afraid of any woman who both thinks and feels deeply.”
― Sena Jeter Naslund, Ahab's Wife, or The Star-Gazer

“The Vatican won't prosecute pedophile priests but I decide I'm not ready for motherhood and it's condemnation for me? These are the same people that won't support national condom distribution that PREVENTS teenage pregnancy.”
― Sonya Renee Taylor

“... in practice the standard for what constitutes rape is set not at the level of women's experience of violation but just above the level of coercion acceptable to men.”
― Judith Lewis Herman

“Women who focus on style over substance usually find themselves in a big fucking hole, with other men who want to fuck the hole. Oh so smooth, and none sophistacted. Because, you know, how sophisticated can hole-fucking really be”
― Emilie Autumn

“But as the years went on, I realised that what I really want to be, all told, is a human. Just a productive, honest, courteously treated human.”
― Caitlin Moran, How to Be a Woman

“Women are born with pain built in. It's our physical destiny. Period pains, sore boobs, child birth, you know. We carry it within ourselves throughout our lives. Men don't. They have to seek it out. “Women are born with pain built in,” she says. “It’s our physical destiny: period pains, sore boobs, childbirth, you know. We carry it within ourselves throughout our lives, men don’t. They have to seek it out, they invent all these gods and demons and things just so they can feel guilty about things, which is something we do very well on our own. And then they create wars so they can feel things and touch each other and when there aren’t any wars they can play rugby.
We have it all going on in here inside.”
― Phoebe Waller-Bridge, Fleabag: The Scriptures

“I am a woman and a warrior. If you think I can't be both, you've been lied to.”
― Jennifer Zeynab Joukhadar, The Map of Salt and Stars

“When Eve ate the apple her knowledge increased. But God liked dumb women so Paradise ceased. Gwen Goodnight. Her Work.”
― Jennifer Crusie, Faking It

“Hey, look at me! Look at me! Look at me! And...look at me. Will he think I'm sexy enough? Will he find me wholesome enough? Am I fuckable? Is he allergic to feathers?!”
― Emilie Autumn

“a woman should have every honorable motive to exertion which is enjoyed by man, to the full extent of her capacities and endowments. The case is too plain for argument. Nature has given woman the same powers, and subjected her to the same earth, breathes the same air, subsists on the same food, physical, moral, mental and spiritual. She has, therefore, an equal right with man, in all efforts to obtain and maintain a perfect existence.”
― Frederick Douglass

“You learn that the only way to get rock-star power as a girl is to be a groupie and bare your breasts and get chosen for the night. We learn that the only way to get anywhere is through men. And it's a lie.”
― Kathleen Hanna

“How about "diamonds are a girl's best friends"? Nope. It should be switched around and pointed out, instead, that your best friends are diamonds.”
― Gina Barreca, It's Not That I'm Bitter . . .: Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying About Visible Panty Lines and Conquered the World

“Weakness' is weakness only in light of the aims man sets for himself, the instruments at his disposal and the laws he imposes.”
― Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex

“Feminism...is not 'women as victims' but women refusing to be victims.”
― Gloria Steinem, The Trouble With Rich Women