Feminism Quotes

Chains of gold are still chains.

~ Robert Thier

Reproductive freedom is critical to a whole range of issues. If we can’t take charge of this most personal aspect of our lives, we can’t take care of anything. It should not be seen as a privilege or as a benefit, but a fundamental human right.

~ Faye Wattleton

...the consequences of militancy do not disappear when the need for militancy is over. Freedom is fragile and must be protected. To sacrifice it, even as a temporary measure, is to betray it.

~ Germaine Greer

It really is something ... that men disapprove even of our doing things that are patently good. Wouldn't it be possible for us just to banish these men from our lives, and escape their carping and jeering once and for all? Couldn't we live without them? Couldn't we earn our living and manage our affairs without help from them? Come on, let's wake up, and claim back our freedom, and the honour and dignity that they have usurped from us for so long. Do you think that if we really put our minds to it, we would be lacking the courage to defend ourselves, the strength to fend for ourselves, or the talents to earn our own living? Let's take our courage into our hands and do it, and then we can leave it up to them to mend their ways as much as they can: we shan't really care what the outcome is, just as long as we are no longer subjugated to them.

~ Moderata Fonte

She could just pack up and leave, but she does not visualize what's beyond ahead.

~ Núria Añó

Exhaustion was pressing upon and overpowering her. Good-by--because I love you. He did not know; he did not understand. He would never understand. Perhaps Doctor Mandelet would have understood if she had seen him--but it was too late; the shore was far behind her, and her strength was gone.She looked into the distance, and the old terror flamed up for an instant, then sank again.

~ Kate Chopin

But I am, personally, not a gambler. I wouldn’t spend £1 on the lottery, let alone take a punt on a pregnancy. The stakes are far, far too high. I can’t agree with a society that would force me to bet on how much I could love under duress.

~ Caitlin Moran

Besides, a life without freedom to choose is not worth having.

~ Alasdair Gray

It is not in becoming a whore that a woman becomes an outlaw in this man's world; it is in the possession of herself, the ownership and effective control of her own body, her seperateness and distinctness, the integrity of her body as hers, not his. Prostitution may be against the written law, but no prostitute has defied the prerogatives or power of men as a class through prostitution. No prostitute provides any model for freedom or action in a world of freedom that can be used with intelligence and integrity by a woman; the model exists to entice counterfeit female sexual revolutionaries, gullible liberated girls, and to serve the men who enjoy them.

~ Andrea Dworkin

Freedom: both so priceless and so expensive.

~ Patricia Duncker

No one has the right to place one human being in a position of political power over another.

~ Wendy Mcelroy

Sex-positive feminism embraces the entire range of human sexuality and is based on the idea that sexual freedom is an essential component of women's freedom. - Madison Young

~ Tristan Taormino

I go back for seconds and thirds and fourths and fifths, when it’s good. Just not if it means some guy gets to put a leash on me.

~ Paula Stokes

When the women begin to take an active part in the struggle, no power on earth can stop us from achieving freedom in our lifetime.

~ Nelson Mandela

They say they give their women more freedom, but there's still the impression that the freedom was theirs to 'give' in the first place.

~ Brandon Sanderson

There are moment of sadness and moment of joy. This is life.

~ Beth Cohen

The ability for a woman to be free is connected with her ability to love another woman.

~ Susan Griffin

This revolution will be noted. It will be successful and above all, it will be in words.

~ Moonshine Noire

Women that speak against Islam are being labelled as islamophobic, as though our right to free speech is disregarded, when it comes down to an oppressive regime, which does not even recognise women as human...

~ Anita B. Sulser Phd

In order to justify your nonsense, you continue to fight battles won long ago. You rage against threats that exist only in your mind....You focus on the colour of schoolbags, sexist pronouns, pink toys in Kinder Surprises and the sharing of dish-washing duties in relationships. All the while completely ignoring what it is that really threatens the freedom of women....Your aversion towards the patriarchy, manifested in the form of straight white males, has led you you to become bedfellows of all the other minorities who share that aversion.

~ Marion Le Pen

And she wanted to be free. It wasn't Mr. Brumley she wanted; he was but a means — if indeed he was a means — to an end. The person she wanted, the person she had always wanted — was herself. Could Mr. Brumley give her that? Would Mr. Brumley give her that? Was it conceivable he would carry sacrifice to such a pitch as that?...

~ H.g. Wells

She had learnt many things since the days of her first rebellion, and she knew now that this matter of the man friend and nothing else in the world is the central issue in the emancipation of women. The difficulty of him is latent in every other restriction of which women complain. The complete emancipation of women will come with complete emancipation of humanity from jealousy — and no sooner. All other emancipations are shams until a woman may go about as freely with this man as with that, and nothing remains for emancipation when she can.

~ H.g. Wells

Freedom of expression is more than a fashion statement.

~ Miss Vera

And so, what of it all? What of me and my passions and personas, my great loves and failures of love, my writing, my politics? What of the clanging opinions, the endless queries as to the whys and wherefores of how I chose to conduct myself? In the end, there is but one answer to every question, whether it is spit at me or made as gentlest inquiry: I was I.

~ Elizabeth Berg

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

~ Irina Dunn

We need to reclaim the word 'feminism'. We need the word 'feminism' back real bad. When statistics come in saying that only 29% of American women would describe themselves as feminist - and only 42% of British women - I used to think, What do you think feminism IS, ladies? What part of 'liberation for women' is not for you? Is it freedom to vote? The right not to be owned by the man you marry? The campaign for equal pay? 'Vogue' by Madonna? Jeans? Did all that good shit GET ON YOUR NERVES? Or were you just DRUNK AT THE TIME OF THE SURVEY?

~ Caitlin Moran

I want a Zero Tolerance policy on All The Patriarchal Bullshit.

~ Caitlin Moran

At some point I was a Happy African Feminist Who Does Not Hate Men and Who Likes to Wear Lip Gloss and High Heels for Herself and Not For Men.

~ Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Ladies, we are at a massive disadvantage in the workplace. Your male peers are flirting with their male bosses constantly. The average workplace is like f*cking Bromancing the Stone. That’s basically what male bonding is. Flirting. They’re flirting with each other playing golf, they’re flirting with each other going to the football, they’re flirting with each other chatting at the urinals – and, sadly, flirting with each other in after-hours visits to strip clubs and pubs. They are bonding with each other over their biological similarities. If the only way you can bond with them is over your biological differences, you go for it. Feel pressurised to actually f*ck them if you do? Then don’t flirt. Find it an easy way to just crack on? Then crack on – and don’t blame other women for doing it.

~ Caitlin Moran

You honkies want women to be like cookies, all sweet and dainty and easy to eat. But I'm fry bread, you bitch, and I'm proud of it.

~ Eden Robinson

A femme fatale and a warrior princess.

~ Cassandra Clare

The men sit around getting fat and arguing with each other about something they call “philosophy” - most of which is pure nonsense.

~ David Eddings

Then he started his period.One week in bed.Two doctors in.Three painkillers four times a day.And later a letter to the powers-that-bedemanding full-paid menstrual leave twelve weeks per year.

~ Carol Ann Duffy

O woman, father says natural is beautifulso why do you redden your cheeks and blacken your eyes?Why do you remove the hair on your legsand draw them into your brows?Why do you hold your breathlest your stomach showand hold your fartlest they knowthat you’re a human? O woman, father says natural is beautifulso why do you straighten your hairto curl it nextand pretend to orgasm so they think you enjoyed the sex?Why do you dumb yourself downand push your breasts up?Why do you smile when you’re told toand love when you don’t want to?When? When will you stop, woman? Father says natural is beautifulbut that is doubtfulfor what does father knowhe’s only a fellow.

~ Kamand Kojouri

Making God a man is the consolation prize that our forefathers gave themselves for not being the ones who were each blessed with a vagina.

~ Mokokoma Mokhonoana

I'm a post-menopausal woman who's lived in a man's world for twenty years. A more cynical, cruel creature it's hard to find.

~ Mo Hayder

I truly believed that a man should not be seen to be out front on feminism. That would be just like a man to try to take over the women's movement. We'd taken over everything else in history, in society, in the world, why not feminism, too? No, I don't think so.

~ Terry Fallis

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).

~ Mokokoma Mokhonoana

Some leaders are born women.

~ Geraldine Ferraro

DOGMA: a political belief one is unreasonably committed to, such as the notion that freedom is good and slavery is bad.BIAS: predeliction for a particular dogma. For example, the feminist bias is that women are equal to men and the male chauvinist bias is that women are inferior. The unbiased view is that the truth lies somewhere in between.(an early comment on backlash, from Glossary for the Eighties)

~ Ellen Willis