Gloria Steinem Quotes

God may be in the details, but the goddess is in the questions.

Once we begin to ask them, there's no turning back.

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?

How ever sugarcoated and ambiguous, every form of authoritarianism must start with a belief in some group's greater right to power, whether that right is justified by sex, race, religion or all four.

We've begun to raise daughters more like sons.

.. but few have the courage to raise our sons more like our daughters.

Law and justice are not always the same.

When they aren't, destroying the law may be the first step toward changing it.

Far too many people are looking for the right person, instead of trying to be the right person.

No man can call himself liberal, or radical, or even a conservative advocate of fair play, if his work depends in any way on the unpaid or underpaid labor of women at home, or in the office.

A woman reading Playboy feels a little like a Jew reading a Nazi manual.

Each individual woman's body demands to be accepted on its own terms.

For women... bras, panties, bathing suits, and other stereotypical gear are visual reminders of a commercial, idealized feminine image that our real and diverse female bodies can't possibly fit. Without these visual references, each individual woman's body demands to be accepted on its own terms. We stop being comparatives. We begin to be unique.

The purpose of feminism is to free the uniqueness of the individual and to understand that inside each of us is a unique human being who is a combination of heredity and environment.

Superwoman is the adversary of the women's movement.

A pedestal is as much a prison as any small, confined space.

At my age, in this still hierarchical time, people often ask me if I’m “passing the torch.” I explain that I’m keeping my torch, thank you very much-and I’m using it to light the torches of others.

We'll never solve the feminization of power until we solve the masculinity of wealth.

There is no such thing as Superwoman. You cant have everything if you do everything.

By the year 2000 we will, I hope, raise our children to believe in human potential, not God.

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.

A woman without a man is like a fish without a bicycle.

In my own mind, I am still a fat brunette from Toledo, and I always will be.

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.

Some of us are becoming the men we wanted to marry.

The future depends entirely on what each of us does every day; a movement is only people moving.

Dreaming, after all, is a form of planning.

Clinging to the past is the problem. Embracing change is the answer.

The first problem for all of us, men and women, is not to learn, but to unlearn.

What I think we need to do is infuse everyday and every action with the kind of values we hope will be in the future, with kindness, with nurturing, with dreams, ambition, using your talents, not resorting to violence, other forms of conflict resolution, with humor, with poetry, with music.

A liberated woman is one who has sex before marriage and a job after.

Men should think twice before making widow hood woman's only path to power.

A feminist is anyone who recognizes the equality and full humanity of women and men.

You can't do it all. No one can have two full-time jobs, have perfect children and cook three meals and be multi-orgasmic 'til dawn ... Superwoman is the adversary of the women's movement.

Planning ahead is a measure of class. The rich and even the middle class plan for future generations, but the poor can plan ahead only a few weeks or days.

The origins of violence against women by men are not biological. If that were the case, it would exist in every culture. And it doesn't exist in every culture.

when pain has been intertwined with love and closeness, it's very difficult to believe that love and closeness can be experienced without pain.

I have yet to hear a man ask for advice on how to combine marriage and a career.

Hope is a very unruly emotion.

The old languages - at least the ones I know - don't have gender. They don't have gendered pronouns. There's no "he" and "she." A human being is a human being.

The story of women's struggle for equality belongs to no single feminist nor to any one organization but to the collective efforts of all who care about human rights

It's an incredible con job when you think about it, to believe something now in exchange for something after death. Even corporations with their reward systems don't try to make it posthumous.

Democracy is mob rule with income taxes.

Happy or Unhappy, families are all mysterious.

I believe that transgender people, including those who have transitioned, are living out real, authentic lives. Those lives should be celebrated, not questioned. Their health care decisions should be theirs and theirs alone to make.

If you add up all the forms of genocide, from female infanticide and genital mutilation to so-called honor crimes, sex trafficking, and domestic abuse, everything, we lose about 6 million humans every year just because they were born female. That's a holocaust every year.

If the shoe doesn't fit, must we change the foot?

Childbirth is more admirable than conquest, more amazing than self-defense, and as courageous as either one.

Feminism isn't called the longest revolution for nothing.

Women's total instinct for gambling is satisfied by marriage

Patriarchy requires violence or the subliminal threat of violence in order to maintain itself... The most dangerous situation for a woman is not an unknown man in the street, or even the enemy in wartime, but a husband or lover in the isolation of their home.

Women can be vivacious. We are allowed more varieties of facial expression and gestures. Men must be rocklike.