Top 325 Quotes & Sayings by Ani DiFranco - Page 6

Second Wave feminism started with consciousness-raising groups, which sounds "big" but it's really just house parties. Women getting together and saying, "You feel this way?! Me too!" Hanging out is consciousness-raising.

One thing that Barack Obama promised, one thing that we all know we must do is evolve our industry and our technology to being green and sustainable. We need to move away from fossil fuels and nuclear power, both of which I think spell doom for human society.

What I like way better than LGBT in terms of labeling sexuality actually is a scheme that comes to me from my friend Animal Prufrock wherein one is identified not by what they supposedly "are" but rather by what they are into. Which brings us to the terms hemosexual, shemosexual, and mosexual.

It's the ground that we walk on, it's where we sit, it's the language that we use. It's a difficult undertaking, but I think without healing that and creating more of a balance between the sexes, we will never have balance globally. I feel like I am going deeper and deeper into this space where I came from that I barely understood.

I think when a society has such a profoundly dark and awful evil such as slavery in its history, then it leaves scars that are very, very deep. And unless we collectively address them and really put our effort to healing them, they'll perpetuate. The United States of America are still suffering from the echoes of slavery. I think we're still reeling from all the pain that is a result of it, and that's a reality.

My main tactic is to focus on the people I respect. The people I think are great people. Do I have their respect? Do I have their support? If the answer is "yes," then I'm doing ok.

Change the narrative, change the laws.

Some people's minds we're not going to change. But if we can't, we need to bring more positive voices into the discussion.

I'm pretty much a workaholic, but when you're doing what you love it's hard to think of a reason to stop.

I feel like we need to understand feminism more as a tool to mediate, counteract, to ultimately defeat patriarchy and restore balance to our government, our culture and our ways of thinking and structuring the world. I think we've had a very "masculine" sensibility for a long time, and I think we need to go back to the roots of social imbalance. I think we have to try to right that first, and from there and all these more pressing issues will follow.

Like a lot of people, I had this naive hope that Barack Obama would fix everything quickly. You know, the culture of celebrity in this country leads us away from democratic ways of thinking and into this hero worship. And so of course, one man cannot swoop in and fix everything on his own. It's much more complicated and difficult than that, and progressives in this country since then have had to come to terms with the fact that we need to do more than actually get out of our house and vote. It's an ongoing process to turn the tide.

When I was a teenager in the '80s, I was the only girl in the guitar shop. Now if you walk into a music store, it's mostly teenage girls. It's great! It's an expansion of possibilities for young women, finding a way to tools even if they aren't directly handed those tools by adults.

Criticism is hard for me but people find hard to believe because they think I'm very tough, very strident, that I tell everybody where to get off, and how. But I've actually got a really thin skin. I don't know. It's quite pathetic. So, yeah, it's hard for me to take criticism. But I also kind of have this sense of humor on overdrive, so I don't take any of it seriously. So that sort of saves me, the fact that I think it's just all kind of funny.

Promiscuity does not scare me as long as she is savvy and self possessed when puberty comes to call. My aim is to simply raise my daughter to be secure in her self worth and capable of happiness all on her own.

One thing I do find in the "lost" generation or something is a kind of abhorrence of history, you know, like it's boring, dumb, or just not interesting. I think it's terribly interesting if you can get your head around how it relates to where you're standing right here and now.

Music has as many roles as people make it. I traveled to Burma once years ago to witness the people's struggle for democracy, meet some people and learn some stuff. And I had this incredible experience over and over again in the Burmese jungle or refugee camps or health clinics with very oppressed, very devastated people. I show up, and I'm white and I'm American and I'm privileged and I have an experience that these people can't fathom and vice versa. There was this huge chasm when I met people for all good reasons.

I never try to imagine the future. I kinda think it's a waste of time. I live in the now.

I'm home in New Orleans!

There are so many things that we have to be very concerned about. But I always come back to feminism.

We need a radically truthful way to acknowledge reproductive freedom.

As any mom knows, having a baby is an extremely creative act and to love and create a baby, it's on par with any other creative act that we could come up with.

Well, it's really gratifying to me to have a stage and some bright lights and a microphone. They're tools and opportunities, and to be able to just pull somebody up on stage with me and point at them is a great feeling.

You've already put more than enough energy into worry. That's all women have been allowed to do, historically.

I fear that Donald Trump will continue to be followed around by the media in its totality as he continues to rail against Hillary Clinton.

The scary truth is, you have to scratch some veneer off to gauge where the moral fiber really is in certain pockets of society. It's raw. It's scary. But it gives us a place to work with.