Top 693 Quotes & Sayings by Gloria Steinem - Page 3

After feminism, I suddenly realised: not everyone has to live the same way. Imagine that!

What we need to be able to do is count all human experience. So I would like to count the secretarial positions as good training places to take over the jobs of the bosses.

Because we are communal creatures, if you're with people who think you're smart, you're smart, and if they think you're dumb, you're dumb.

The question of whether one has one's own political power or goes to work for someone else is not only a feminist question.

It's heartbreaking to watch people working against themselves.

The mark, to me, of a constructive argument is one that looks at a specific problem and says, 'What shall we do about this?' And a nonconstructive one is one that tries to label people.

There's been the same kind of demonizing of the word 'feminism' as words like 'liberal,' 'affirmative action,' and so on.

In a general way, anything that affects men is taken more seriously than anything that affects only women.

A bad facelift is like a bad toupee.

Even before Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton threw their exploratory committees into the ring, every reporter seemed to be asking, 'Which candidate are Americans more ready for: a white woman or a black man?'

I want to help correct the inaccurate image of immigration in the media. There is an idea that women's issues are over here and immigration is over there. Three quarters of undocumented workers are women and children.

When I had a fellowship at the Smithsonian, I asked for a couch in the office because I liked to lie down and take a break.

I'm not saying that women leaders would eliminate violence. We are not more moral than men; we are only uncorrupted by power so far. When we do acquire power, we might turn out to have an equal impulse toward aggression.

You can see the absence of women in governing bodies from Congress to state legislators, on corporate boards, in tenured positions in academia, and as forepeople in factories.

Children are short people. Some you like, some you don't.

The problem for all women is we're identified by how we look instead of by our heads and our hearts.

In Sweden, both parents take care of the children.

There is nothing more fundamental than the idea that the government does not have a right to decide when and whether we have children.

Obviously, there is much similarity among the challenges of transgender people and all women - from health care to harassment to discrimination in the workplace.

There's nothing automatic about political change, about liberation.

'Ms.' always flouted the rules of the ad world that say, especially for products directed at women, that the ad must be connected to the editorial. You don't have food ads unless you have recipes. You don't get clothing ads unless you have lavish fashion coverage. We never did that; every other women's magazine does.

Pearl Jam doesn't just sing about issues they care about. These guys walk it like they talk it.

I remember someone once asked Jack Kennedy why he was paying such close attention to the renovation of the square across from the White House, and he said, 'It may be the only thing my presidency is remembered for.'

I supported Hillary Clinton. She would have made an excellent president. I didn't think she could get elected. I thought it was too soon.

For twenty years, not a week went by when I wasn't on a plane.

The danger of the Internet is cocooning with the like-minded online - of sending an email or Twitter and confusing that with action - while the real corporate and military and government centers of power go right on.

I hope to live to 100. There is so much to do.

A parking lot attendant who's a guy makes a lot more money than a child-care attendant who's a woman.

We are still behaving as if a worker really doesn't have a family because the work pattern really was meant for men who really were the financial support but weren't looking after their families. We need to change this, and we can easily do that.

Obviously, no LGBT person should be denied the ability to be who they are because their boss disagrees.

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.

Women are more than smart enough to see that McCain's policies are a disaster... He is anti- every reproductive issue we've ever fought for.

As for the American child's classic problem - too much mother, too little father - that would be cured by an equalization of parental responsibility.

There's no shortage of great young activists.

Women are liked better when they lose.

Movements are like rivers. Dipping into them is never the same twice.

Do women compete for the favours of men? Yes. They've spent 5,000 years competing.

Because women of color were more likely to be in the paid labor force, they were more likely to recognize discrimination, so they were always leading the women's movement.

The abolition and suffrage movements progressed when united and were damaged by division; we should remember that.

What is frustrating is being told that no matter how hard I've worked, it counts less than my appearance. Although if you're not considered conventionally attractive, that also becomes an issue: you know, you're a feminist because you couldn't get a man.

Diane Keaton is good for women in and of herself. She's smart and funny and real.

Women's progress has been a collective effort.

As long as working women also have to do the work of child and family care at home, they will have two jobs instead of one. Perhaps more important, children will grow up thinking that only women can be loving and nurturing, and men cannot.

If I read the word 'problematize' one more time, I'm going to vomit.

The Republican Party supported the Equal Rights Amendment before the Democratic Party did. But what happened was that a lot of very right-wing Democrats, after the civil rights bill of 1964, left the Democratic Party and gradually have taken over the Republican Party.

The women's movement in England was totally against Margaret Thatcher.

Secretary of state is far superior to vice president, because it's involved in continuously solving problems and making policy and not being on standby.

Having one's traditional role questioned is not a very comfortable experience, perhaps especially for women, who have been able to remain children, and to benefit from work they did not and could not do.

This country can no longer afford to choose our leaders from a talent pool limited by sex, race, money, powerful fathers and paper degrees. It's time to take equal pride in breaking all the barriers.

Liberation does not come from outside.

A majority of Americans want redemption for racism - for our terrible, destructive racist past - and so see a vote for Obama as redemptive.

Women don't want to exchange places with men. Male chauvinists, science-fiction writers and comedians may favor that idea for its shock value, but psychologists say it is a fantasy based on ruling-class ego and guilt.

We're never going to have democratic countries or peaceful countries until we have democratic or peaceful families.

What happens at 50, more or less, you lose what you need to create another person, to sustain another person; you keep what you need to sustain yourself. And there's something wonderful about that.

Perhaps McCain has opposed affirmative action for so long that he doesn't know it's about inviting more people to meet standards, not lowering them.

In the suffragist and abolitionist era, there were a lot of white women and some black men and women who argued for the old hierarchy and against universal adult suffrage - often on religious grounds.

I can say whatever it is that I feel.

Republicans may learn they can't appeal to right-wing patriarchs and most women at the same time.

I'm lucky I don't make my living in front of the camera.

The caste systems of sex and race are interdependent and can only be uprooted together.