Quotes on Women

It's never a good idea to organize society in a way that depletes the energy of half the population. We discovered this with women decades ago, and now it's time to realize it with introverts.

A simple enough pleasure, surely, to have breakfast alone with one's husband, but how seldom married people in the midst of life achieve it.

What we need is a tough new kind of feminism with no illusions. Women do not change institutions simply by assimilating into them. We need a feminism that teaches a woman to say no - not just to the date rapist or overly insistent boyfriend but, when necessary, to the military or corporate hierarchy within which she finds herself. We need a kind of feminism that aims not just to assimilate into the institutions that men have created over the centuries, but to infiltrate and subvert them.

All women, and men of color - we were owned like tables and chairs. We spent a hundred years getting a legal identity as human beings. That's a big thing.

The truth is that all great men have had great mothers. Great women have had, as a rule, great fathers.

What's wrong with trying hard and showing up and being good at your job? We really need to look at ourselves and say we need to reevaluate this. We need to reevaluate that women who ask for a pay raise or ask for a promotion - it's actually an okay thing. It's okay to be ambitious; it's okay to be over-prepared.

If you're one of the only women on a set - if it's you and a bunch of men - you feel like your value doesn't come from your thoughts and your talent and what you say: your value comes from how you look and how you're perceived by the men around you.

Women of color have always been kind of boxed in by the idea that the more you talk about the misogyny of your own community, the more you make that community look bad.

My generation was the turning point. Women older than us didn't expect to have jobs or careers; those younger did. But we were where it was changing - which is interesting but uncomfortable.

Women are never so strong as after their defeat.

I know what every colored woman in this country is doing... Dying. Just like me. But the difference is they dying like a stump. Me, I’m going down like one of those redwoods. I sure did live in this world.

There shouldn't be a segregation of women over a size 16, it should just be all women who want to wear beautiful clothes.

I'll never get bored of seeing flawed women on the screen.

Sisters, we as women are not diminished by priesthood power - we are magnified by it. I know this is true, for I have experienced it again and again.

Friends are generally of the same sex, for when men and women agree, it is only in the conclusions; their reasons are always different.

The naked truth is always better than the best-dressed lie.

If women are being oppressed in Egypt or children are being forced to join armies in the Congo, for example, it is not only acceptable but wonderful for Americans to be concerned, outraged, and active.

It's easy to make clothes for a model, but when you can put them on real women and real curves, that's the test.

What we usually do to great men and women is relegate them to homogenised heroism. Their words and actions become soundbites and images in a way that gives us an excuse not to act bravely in our own lives.

How important it is for us to recognize and celebrate our heroes and she-roes!

The rights of women are to the 21st century what civil rights were to the 20th.