Gloria Steinem Quotes

Without leaps of imagination, or dreaming, we lose the excitement of possibilities. Dreaming, after all, is a form of planning.

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?

God may be in the details, but the goddess is in the questions. Once we begin to ask them, there's no turning back.

We've begun to raise daughters more like sons... but few have the courage to raise our sons more like our daughters.

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.

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

Law and justice are not always the same. When they aren't, destroying the law may be the first step toward changing it.

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

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.

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.

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

Superwoman is the adversary of the women's movement.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

The art of life is not controlling what happens to us, but using what happens to us

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.

When I'm talking to people, I find myself quoting the three organizing rules of Black Lives Matter. Black Lives Matter was initiated by three young women, and too few people know that. But, anyway, the first one is lead with love. The second is low ego, high impact. The third is move with the speed of trust. I must say those make me feel very hopeful for the future.

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

Dreaming, after all, is a form of planning.

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.

One day an army of gray-haired women may quietly take over the Earth!

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

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.

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

No one can give us power. If we aren’t part of the process of taking it, we won’t be strong enough to use it.

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

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.

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.

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.

Law and justice are not always the same.

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

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.

Democracy is mob rule with income taxes.

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.

Happy or Unhappy, families are all mysterious.

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.

Whenever one person stands up and says, “Wait a minute, this is wrong,” it helps other people do the same.

We need to stop raising boys to think that they need to prove their masculinity by being controlling or by not showing emotion or by not being little girls.