Best Feminism Quotes to Inspire, Uplift & Motivate You Every Day

“If women could remind ourselves we make up 51 percent of the population and give birth to the remaining, imagine the power in our collective voice!”

“It is extraordinarily entertaining to watch the historians of the past ... entangling themselves in what they were pleased to call the "problem" of”

“How dare a person tell a woman, how to dress, how to talk, how to behave! Any being who does that, is no human.”

“You can have it all, just not all at the same time.”

“The Bible is not absurd for the people who wrote it; it becomes absurd when people in our day insist on taking it literally. The Bible does not present us with material that is ridiculous in the context from which it came. The Bible springs from the context in which people then were thinking, searching, and trying to find answers .”

“The abiding western dominology can with religion sanction identify anything dark, profound, or fluid with a revolting chaos, an evil to be mastered, a nothing to be ignored. 'God had made us master organizers of the world to establish system where chaos reigns. He has made us adept in government that we may administer government among savages and senile peoples.' From the vantage point of the colonizing episteme, the evil is always disorder rather than unjust order; anarchy rather than control, darkness rather than pallor. To plead otherwise is to write 'carte blanche for chaos.' Yet those who wear the mark of chaos, the skins of darkness, the genders of unspeakable openings -- those Others of Order keep finding voice. But they continue to be muted by the bellowing of the dominant discourse.”

“Antisemitism is unique among religious hatreds. It is a racist conspiracy theory fashioned for the needs of messianic and brutal rulers, as dictators from the Tsars to the Islamists via the Nazis have shown. Many other alleged religious 'hatreds' are not hatreds in the true sense. If I criticise Islamic, Orthodox Jewish or Catholic attitudes towards women, for instance, and I'm accused of being a bigot, I shrug and say it is not bigoted to oppose bigotry.”

“derelict. my voice cracked and yolk poured out. wind chimes rigid, no breeze, no song. my wings found hidden in your suitcase. pleas for help mistaken for a swan song. i'm stuffing pages from my journal down my throat as kindling. hoping the smoke will get the taste of you out of my mouth. he looks at me from across the room and all i want is to push him against the wall. ravage. ravage. carnage has never been more vogue. is it still art if it doesn't bring you to your knees? lover, let me prey at your altar. let me bare my fangs in praise. don't i look so pretty in a funeral shroud? i keep time with the click of my creaking bones. dance with me under the milky translucence of a world suffocating. how did you find me? i buried myself beneath the cicadas. is a girl trapped in glass still a prize?”

“Theologians and other clerks,”

“Well, knowledge is a fine thing, and mother Eve thought so; but she smarted so severely for hers, that most of her daughters have been afraid of it since.”

“When you grow up as a girl, it is like there are faint chalk lines traced approximately three inches around your entire body at all times, drawn by society and often religion and family and particularly other women, who somehow feel invested in how you behave, as if your actions reflect directly on all womanhood.”

“As for mother Eve - I wasn't there and can't deny the story, but I will say this. If she brought evil into the world, we men have had the lion's share of keeping it going ever since.”

“To terrify children with the image of hell, to consider women an inferior creation—is that good for the world?”

“What I hadn't considered before it came up in therapy is: am I even able to make room for a male to help me? I think I view it as co-dependency or a robbery of my independence. I think as women, we definitely experience men putting in much less that we would like them to and we can opt for a single existence, but can we accept help? Can we truly invite it in when some (I admit: few) men are willing to give it?”

“When the man who was initially my boyfriend transitioned into my husband, it was as if overnight he expected my role in his life to change. He complained that I didn't spend enough time at home (I was out working a lot), he complained that my ambitions overpowered my duty as a his 'wife'. Well I cut and run as soon as I heard that rhetoric but I am aware that many women don't. We perpetuate the servitude to male need. It is important to add that I know plenty of men with moths who absolutely didn't spoil their songs but somehow society seems to still give licence for them to receive the 'special treatment' anyway. They genuinely feel justified in thinking that their contribution to family, society or the home is enough while we women are left feeling we aren't 'doing enough'. It's ingrained in generation after generation. Most of my relationships have been with evolved modern men who claim to think their relationship with me has been balanced and equal. But I have to differ on this. There is an invisible expectation of women to mother them...”

“When the man who was initially my boyfriend transitioned into my husband, it was as if overnight he expected my role in his life to change. He complained that I didn't spend enough time at home (I was out working a lot), he complained that my ambitions overpowered my duty as a his 'wife'. Well I cut and run as soon as I heard that rhetoric but I am aware that many women don't. We perpetuate the servitude to male need. It is important to add that I know plenty of men with mothers who absolutely didn't spoil their sons but somehow society seems to still give licence for them to receive the 'special treatment' anyway. They genuinely feel justified in thinking that their contribution to family, society or the home is enough while we women are left feeling we aren't 'doing enough'. It's ingrained in generation after generation. Most of my relationships have been with evolved modern men who claim to think their relationship with me has been balanced and equal. But I have to differ on this. There is an invisible expectation of women to mother them...”

“By learning to be with myself I may be able to learn to have healthier relationships in future. I've always wanted to be looked after, but instead I did too much looking after. I've always wanted to be supported, but I did too much supporting. I don't even know if I understand how to accept help. I certainly don't know how to ask for it. So, it is with that in mind right now I need to learn to be still with myself, to be bored of myself, to validate myself. It's time to work on the most important relationship I will ever have and the one I've neglected the most: me.”

“The other thing is, I am not desperate enough to compromise for a relationship...I actually like my own company. I like my own space. I like doing what I want!”

“It's your world, but I make my way in it. At fifteen, no, I couldn't stand up to you. The age of illusions, when we know nothing, we hope for everything; we're wandering in a mist ... And the half of the world that's never had any use for us, suddenly is besieging us. You”

“But nearly every woman I know has a roughly similar story - in fact, dozens of them: stories about being obsessed with a celebrity, work colleague or someone they vaguely knew for years; living in a parallel world in their head; conjuring up endless plots and scenarios for this thing that never actually happened.”

“Barbie”

“Silent Messages – 2”

“Making someone feel obligated, pressured or forced into doing something of a sexual nature that they don't want to is sexual coercion. This includes persistent attempts at sexual contact when the person has already refused you. Nobody owes you sex, ever; and no means no, always.”

“If one does not make an ego out of gender, one would still know whether one is a man or a woman, gay, straight, bisexual, transgender—whatever else we may think of. But those identities need to fit very loosely and be worn very lightly. All sense of privilege or deprivation that has developed around one’s gender identity, all rigidity regarding proper roles and behaviors for the various genders, must be cut through.”

“Two separate beings, in different circumstances, face to face in freedom and seeking justification of their existence through one another, will always live an adventure full of risk and promise." (p. 248)”

“I know enough to know that no woman should ever marry a man who hated his mother.”

“If you abandon yourself in order to be in a relationship, you cannot be in a relationship”

“Young girls often feel strong, courageous, highly creative, and powerful until they begin to receive undermining sexist messages that encourage them to conform to conventional notions of femininity. To conform they have to give up power.”

“Some women do not masturbate for pleasure; they masturbate to make a political statement: to remind us that women do not really need men (or at least not as much and as frequently as every single male chauvinist and every single misogynist believes).”

“(Ezekial saw the wheel”

“Deeply ingrained in the infantile cycle is the conscious or unconscious assumption that the cure for depression is to replace it with pleasant happy feelings, whereas the only valid cure for any kind of depression lies in the acceptance of the real suffering. To climb out of it any other way is simply a palliative, minus foundations for the next depression. The roots of our neurosis lie here, and the conflict between the longing for growth and freedom and our incapacity or refusal to pay the price and suffering of the kind which challenge is the supremacy of the ego's demands”

“I think I'd like to see what else is out there, what a woman might do with a fortune and a good name.”

“My hope for the future, not just in the music industry, but in every young girl I meet…is that they all realize their worth and ask for it.”

“I earnestly wish to point out in what true dignity and human happiness consists. I wish to persuade women to endeavor to acquire strength, both of mind and body, and to convince them that the soft phrases, susceptibility of heart, delicacy of sentiment, and refinement of taste, are almost synonymous with epithets of weakness, and that those beings are only the objects of pity, and that kind of love which has been termed its sister, will soon become objects of contempt.”

“What is a Wanderess? Bound by no boundaries, contained by no countries, tamed by no time, she is the force of nature’s course.”

“Once upon a time it was not safe to be born a girl. It is important to remember that time does not exist. Once upon a time, all of time, it was not safe to be a girl. Lecherous men would disguise themselves as kittens left for dead by their mothers so that little girls would pick them up and kiss their eyes into vision and then the kittens would grow and grow until they were bigger and fiercer than lions and they would eat the girls in one bite, bones and skin and hair and all. Once upon a time it was not safe to be born a girl because either you were the kitten abandoned in a dumpster or you were devoured by it. Once upon a time it was not safe to be a girl because girls have fires inside of them and men who are cold cling to their warmth until they leech it from the bones of women and then burn them to death with their own matches.”

“And there are so much easier ways to destroy a woman. You don't have to rape her or kill her; you don't even have to beat her. You can just marry her. You don't even have to do that. You can just let her work in your office for thirty-five dollars a week.”

“Most men fear getting laughed at or humiliated by a romantic prospect while most women fear rape and death.”

“Men should think twice before making widowhood women's only path to power.”

“the phantom of the man-who-would-understand,”

“I am obnoxious to each carping tongue/ Who says my hand a needle better fits./ A poet's pen all scorn I should thus wrong/ For such despite they cast on female wits;/ If what I do prove well, it won't advance,/ They'll say it's stolen, or else, it was by chance.”

“I told you in the course of this paper that Shakespeare had a sister; but do not look for her in”

“Maybe that's why you demonised them,”

“Don't let a king”

“A woman knows very well that, though a wit sends her his poems, praises her judgment, solicits her criticism, and drinks her tea, this by no means signifies that he respects her opinions, admires her understanding, or will refuse, though the rapier is denied him, to run through the body with his pen.”

“Eliza has no use for the foolish romantic tradition that all women love to be mastered, if not actually bullied and beaten.”

“I don't need the aid of a clever man to teach me how to live. I can find it out for myself.”

“There are much more important qualities to have than a docile disposition.”

“Marriage is supposed to be a union between two equals who love and support each other, not a master-slave relationship in which the man commands a docile woman.”

“From this point of view, science - the real game in town - is rhetoric, a series of efforts to persuade relevant social actors that one's manufactured knowledge is a route to a desired form of very objective power.”

“In oppressing, one becomes oppressed. Men are enchained by reason of their very sovereignty; it is because they alone earn money that their wives demand checks, it is because they alone engage in a business or profession that their wives require them to be successful, it is because they alone embody transcendence that their wives wish to rob them of it by taking charge...”

“You tell the truth and people can shit all over it... but somehow once it's said it can't be unsaid; it stays living, somewhere, in someone's heart.”

“The enormous difference between fighting gender discrimination as opposed to race discrimination is good people immediately perceive race discrimination as evil and intolerable. But when I talked about sex-based discrimination, I got the response, 'What are you talking about? Women are treated ever so much better than men!”

“I'm not sure how we got to this place, where a girl's only value is in what kind of marriage she has, how capable she is of keeping a man happy.”

“Men have sacrificed and crippled themselves physically and emotionally to feed, house, and protect women and children. None of their pain or achievement is registered in feminist rhetoric, which portrays men as oppressive and callous exploiters.”

“My silences had not protected me. Your silence will not protect you. But for every real word spoken, for every attempt I had ever made to speak those truths for which I am still seeking, I had made contact with other women while we examined the words to fit a world in which we all believed, bridging our differences.”

“Do you really believe ... that everything historians tell us about men – or about women – is actually true? You ought to consider the fact that these histories have been written by men, who never tell the truth except by accident.”

“I was going to die, sooner or later, whether or not I had even spoken myself. My silences had not protected me. Your silences will not protect you.... What are the words you do not yet have? What are the tyrannies you swallow day by day and attempt to make your own, until you will sicken and die of them, still in silence? We have been socialized to respect fear more than our own need for language.”

“Equality is not a concept. It's not something we should be striving for. It's a necessity. Equality is like gravity. We need it to stand on this earth as men and women, and the misogyny that is in every culture is not a true part of the human condition. It is life out of balance, and that imbalance is sucking something out of the soul of every man and woman who's confronted with it. We need equality. Kinda now.”

“Capabilities are clearly manifested only when they have been realized.”

“They'll say you are bad”

“They say women have no conscience about laws, don't they?" Mrs. MacAvelly suggested.”

“I don't believe there is a God", I said fiercely, "and if there is, He's not the merciful being He's always depicted, or He wouldn't be always torturing me for His own amusement.”

“He - and if there is a God, I am convinced he is a he, because no woman could or would ever fuck things up this badly.”

“Why is female vulnerability still only acceptable when it's neuroticised and personal; when it feeds back on itself? Why do people still not get it when we handle vulnerability like philosophy, at some remove?”

“; the man who does not "understand" a woman is happy to replace his subjective deficiency with an objective resistance; instead of admitting his ignorance, he recognizes the presence of a mystery exterior to himself: here is an excuse that flatters his laziness and vanity at the same time.”

“Excessive praise arises from the same bigotry matrix as excessive criticism.”

“With oppression, one group has the power to realize their choices and to name the world in order to change the world, while the other has these choices, these names, and this world imposed on them.”

“Women's liberation is one thing, but the permeation of anti-male sentiment in post-modern popular culture - from our mocking sitcom plots to degrading commercial story lines - stands testament to the ignorance of society. Fair or not, as the lead gender that never requested such a role, the historical male reputation is quite balanced.”

“The free mind, unafraid of labor, presses on to attain the good.”

“If so few female geniuses are found in history, it is because society denies them any means of expression.”

“Philosophy is the toil which can never tire persons engaged in it. All ways are strewn with roses, and the farther you go, the more enchanting objects appear before you and invite you on.”

“Man looks on woman from his vantage point and reduces her to a being that is not for-itself but for-him.”

“Regardless of the staggering dimensions of the world about us, the density of our ignorance, the risks of catastrophes to come, and our individual weakness within the immense collectivity, the fact remains that we are absolutely free today if we choose to will our existence in its finiteness, a finiteness which is open on the infinite. And in fact, any man who has known real loves, real revolts, real desires, and real will knows quite well that he has no need of any outside guarantee to be sure of his goals; their certitude comes from his own drive.”

“Life is not about living the safer option. Life is about living a life worth living.”

“One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman.”

“Often father and daughter look down on mother (woman) together. They exchange meaningful glances when she misses a point. They agree that she is not bright as they are, cannot reason as they do. This collusion does not save the daughter from the mother’s fate.”

“...[G]reat progress was evident in the last Congress of the American 'Labour Union' in that among other things, it treated working women with complete equality. While in this respect the English, and still more the gallant French, are burdened with a spirit of narrow-mindedness. Anybody who knows anything of history knows that great social changes are impossible without the feminine ferment. Social progress can be measured exactly by the social position of the fair sex (the ugly ones included).”

“It's difficult to see the glass ceiling because it's made of glass. Virtually invisible. What we need is for more birds to fly above it and shit all over it, so we can see it properly.”

“But, of course, you might be asking yourself, 'Am I a feminist? I might not be. I don't know! I still don't know what it is! I'm too knackered and confused to work it out. That curtain pole really still isn't up! I don't have time to work out if I am a women's libber! There seems to be a lot to it. WHAT DOES IT MEAN?'”

“When God made man she was practicing.”

“good girls go to heaven and bad girls go everywhere”

“I think that men ought to treat women like something other than weaker men with breasts.”

“All you have to do, I tell myself, is keep your mouth shut and look stupid. It shouldn't be that hard.”

“Well, I have lost you; and I lost you fairly;”

“A girl’s got to use what she’s given and I’m not going to make a guy drool the way a Britney video does. So I take it to extremes. I don’t say I dress sexily on stage - what I do is so extreme. It’s meant to make guys think: ‘I don’t know if this is sexy or just weird.”

“She talks like you. It’s not every day you hear a four-year-old say Prince Charming is a douchebag who’s only holding Cinderella back.”