A better time is coming. Women, capable of using their facilities for the improvement of society, will not much longer remain in the castle of indolence. Would that those of my sex who are urging, onward, into the industrial pursuits, and other professions appropriate to men, might turn their attention to improvements in domestic economy. Here is an open field, where their heads and hearts as well as hands may find ample scope and noble objects.

- Sarah J. Hale

Can man be free if woman be a slave?

- Percy Bysshe Shelley

The universal social pressure upon women to be all alike, and do all the same things, and to be content with identical restrictions, has resulted not only in terrible suffering in the lives of exceptional women, but also in the loss of unmeasured feminine values in special gifts. The Drama of the Woman of Genius has too often been a tragedy of misshapen and perverted power.

- Anna Garlin Spencer

In the end, anti-black, anti-female, and all forms of discrimination are equivalent to the same thing -- anti-humanism.

- Shirley Chisholm

While Europe's eye is fix'd on mighty things,
The fate of empires and the fall of kings;
While quacks of State must each produce his plan,
And even children lisp the Rights of Man;
Amid this mighty fuss just let me mention,
The Rights of Woman merit some attention.

- Robert Burns

Feminism's agenda is basic: It asks that women not be forced to "choose" between public justice and private happiness.

- Susan Faludi

I've run into more discrimination as a woman than as an Indian.

- Wilma Mankiller

My goal is to be accused of being strident.

- Susan Faludi

In the adjustment of the new order of things, we women demand an equal voice; we shall accept nothing less.

- Carrie Chapman Catt

You don't have to be anti-man to be pro-woman.

- Jane Galvin Lewis

At the outstart of discussions of women's intellectual attainments, it is well to remember how few are the men of the first rank.

- Anna Garlin Spencer

No one can argue any longer about the rights of women. It's like arguing about earthquakes.

- Lillian Hellman

Any woman who chooses to behave like a full human being should be warned that the armies of the status quo will treat her as something of a dirty joke. That's their natural and first weapon. She will need her sisterhood.

- Gloria Steinem

One of the things about equality is not just that you be treated equally to a man, but that you treat yourself equally to the way you treat a man.

- Marlo Thomas

Our struggle today is not to have a female Einstein get appointed as an assistant professor. It is for a woman schlemiel to get as quickly promoted as a male schlemiel.

- Bella Abzug

What I know in life runs the gamut of the "feminist experience." The true meaning of feminism is this: to use your strong womanly image to gain strong results in society.

- Pamela Anderson

People have been writing premature obituaries on the women's movement since its beginning.

- Ellen Goodman

I think nothing is religion which puts one individual absolutely above others, and surely nothing is religion which puts one sex above another. [source]

- Julia Ward Howe

I don't mind living in a man's world as long as I can be a woman in it.

- Marilyn Monroe

Women are systematically degraded by receiving the trivial attentions which men think it manly to pay to the sex, when, in fact, men are insultingly supporting their own superiority.

- Mary Wollstonecraft

Any woman whose I.Q. hovers above her body temperature must be a feminist.

- Rita Mae Brown

A feminist is a woman who does not allow anyone to think in her place.

- Michele Le Doeuff

If particular care and attention is not paid to the ladies, we are determined to foment a rebellion, and will not hold ourselves bound by any laws in which we have no voice or representation.

- Abigail Adams

This is no simple reform. It really is a revolution. Sex and race because they are easy and visible differences have been the primary ways of organizing human beings into superior and inferior groups and into the cheap labour in which this system still depends. We are talking about a society in which there will be no roles other than those chosen or those earned. We are really talking about humanism.

- Gloria Steinem

The basic discovery about any people is the discovery of the relationship between its men and its women.

- Pearl S. Buck

No one sex can govern alone. I believe that one of the reasons why civilization has failed so lamentably is that is had one-sided government.

- Nancy Astor

When we talk about equal pay for equal work, women in the workplace are beginning to catch up. If we keep going at this current rate, we will achieve full equality in about 475 years. I don't know about you, but I can't wait that long.

- Lya Sorano

It was we, the people; not we, the white male citizens; nor yet we, the male citizens; but we, the whole people, who formed the Union.

- Susan B. Anthony

Does feminist mean large unpleasant person who'll shout at you or someone who believes women are human beings. To me it's the latter, so I sign up.

- Margaret Atwood

What I am proud of, what seems so simply clear, is that feminism is a way to fight for justice, always in short supply.

- Barbara Strickland

It's important to remember that feminism is no longer a group of organizations or leaders. It's the expectations that parents have for their daughters, and their sons, too. It's the way we talk about and treat one another. It's who makes the money and who makes the compromises and who makes the dinner. It's a state of mind. It's the way we live now.

- Anna Quindlen

I myself have never been able to find out precisely what feminism is: I only know that people call me a feminist whenever I express sentiments that differentiate me from a doormat, or a prostitute.

1913

- Rebecca West

If divorce has increased by one thousand percent, don't blame the women's movement. Blame the obsolete sex roles on which our marriages were based.

speech, New York City, January 20, 1974

- Betty Friedan

Men, their rights, and nothing more; women, their rights, and nothing less.

- Susan B. Anthony

We've got a generation now who were born with semiequality. They don't know how it was before, so they think, this isn't too bad. We're working. We have our attache' cases and our three piece suits. I get very disgusted with the younger generation of women. We had a torch to pass, and they are just sitting there. They don't realize it can be taken away. Things are going to have to get worse before they join in fighting the battle.

- Erma Bombeck

Remember, Ginger Rogers did everything Fred Astaire did, but she did it backwards and in high heels.

- Faith Whittlesey

I will feel equality has arrived when we can elect to office women who are as incompetent as some of the men who are already there.

- Maureen Reagan

It is easier to live through someone else than to become complete yourself.

The Feminine Mystique, 1963

- Betty Friedan

Women do not have to sacrifice personhood if they are mothers. They do not have to sacrifice motherhood in order to be persons. Liberation was meant to expand women's opportunities, not to limit them. The self-esteem that has been found in new pursuits can also be found in mothering.

- Elaine Heffner