I have me brave women who are exploring the outer edge of human possibility, with no history to guide them, and with a courage to make themselves vulnerable that I find moving beyond words.
The family is the basic cell of government: it is where we are trained to believe that we are human beings or that we are chattel, it is where we are trained to see the sex and race divisions and become callous to injustice even if it is done to ourselves, to accept as biological a full system of authoritarian government.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The family unit is foundational in shaping our beliefs and attitudes towards society and authority.
This quote emphasizes that the family serves as the primary foundation for our understanding of humanity and governance. Gloria Steinem argues that the lessons we learn within our family structures can influence our perspectives on societal roles, divisions based on sex and race, and our acceptance of authority. If families instill negative beliefs about injustice and dehumanization, then individuals may perpetuate these ideas in broader society.
Themes
In practice
Example use cases
In a speech addressing social justice, one could say, 'As Gloria Steinem noted, the family is the basic cell of government and shapes our understanding of injustice.'
More from Gloria Steinem
All quotes →If women are supposed to be less rational and more emotional at the beginning of our menstrual cycle when the female hormone is at its lowest level, then why isn't it logical to say that, in those few days, women behave the most like the way men behave all month long?
Age brings a freedom. When you're young, you're much more subject to the idea of what feminine is or how you should look or how you should behave.
All those chemicals that create empathy only work when you are in a room together.
Dreaming, after all, is a form of planning.
Obviously, there is much similarity among the challenges of transgender people and all women - from health care to harassment to discrimination in the workplace.
Similar quotes
I'd say just go with the flow. And I take my hat off to any mother out there who works full-time and raises a family as well. It's hard work.
All of us have moments in our lives that test our courage. Taking children into a house with a white carpet is one of them.
Thanksgiving. It proved you had survived another year with its wars, inflation, unemployment, smog, presidents. It was a grand neurotic gathering of clans: loud drunks, grandmothers, sisters, aunts, screaming children, would-be suicides. And don't forget indigestion. I wasn't different from anyone else: There sat the 18-pound bird on my sink, dead, plucked, totally disemboweled. Iris would roast it for me.
I have lived with extraordinary women, whether it was my grandmother, my mother. My father passed away when I was 16... I was witness to a woman who single handedly brought up the entire family and managed to do everything... She was an extraordinary role model for me.
There was one moment where they were riding their little ponies in Scotland, and Stella said to me: 'Dad! You're Paul McCartney, aren't you?' 'Yes darling, but I'm Daddy really'.
I would have been a terrible mother because I'm basically a very selfish human being. Not that that has stopped most people going off and having children.