Because I am a woman, I must make unusual efforts to succeed. If I fail, no one will say, "She doesn't have what it takes." They will say, "Women don't have what it takes." ~Clare Boothe Luce

Because I am a woman, I must make unusual efforts to succeed. If I fail, no one will say, "She doesn't have what it takes." They will say, "Women don't have what it takes." ~Clare Boothe Luce

I myself have never been able to find out precisely what feminism is: I only know that people call me a feminist whenever I express sentiments that differentiate me from a door mat or a prostitute." ~Rebecca West, "Mr Chesterton in Hysterics: A Study in Prejudice," The Clarion, 14 Nov 1913, reprinted in The Young Rebecca, 1982

The emotional, sexual, and psychological stereotyping of females begins when the doctor says, "It's a girl." ~Shirley Chisholm

Remember, Ginger Rogers did everything Fred Astaire did, but backwards and in high heels. ~Faith Whittlesey

Feminism is the radical notion that women are people. ~Cheris Kramarae and Paula Treichler

The test for whether or not you can hold a job should not be the arrangement of your chromosomes. ~Bella Abzug

Feminism directly confronts the idea that one person or set of people [has] the right to impose definitions of reality on others. ~Liz Stanley and Sue Wise

I see my body as an instrument, rather than an ornament. ~Alanis Morissette, quoted in Reader's Digest, March 2000

I'm tough, I'm ambitious, and I know exactly what I want. If that makes me a bitch, okay.~Madonna Ciccone

Instead of getting hard ourselves and trying to compete, women should try and give their best qualities to men - bring them softness, teach them how to cry. ~Joan Baez, "Sexism Seen but not Heard," Los Angeles Times, 1974

I've left Bethlehem, and I feel free. I've left the girl I was supposed to be, and some day I'll be born. ~Paula Cole, "Tiger," This Fire

A man has every season while a woman only has the right to spring.~Jane Fonda

You know, when I first went into the movies Lionel Barrymore played my grandfather. Later he played my father and finally he played my husband. If he had lived I'm sure I would have played his mother. That's the way it is in Hollywood. The men get younger and the women get older. ~Lillian Gish

How good does a female athlete have to be before we just call her an athlete? ~Author Unknown

I am working for the time when unqualified blacks, browns, and women join the unqualified men in running our government. ~Cissy Farenthold

I do not wish them to have power over men, but over themselves.~Mary Wollstonecraft

I would have girls regard themselves not as adjectives but as nouns.~Elizabeth Cady Stanton, "Our Girls"

The feminine mystique has succeeded in burying millions of American women alive. ~Betty Friedan

Isn't that the problem? That women have been swindled for centuries into substituting adornment for love, fashion (as it were)for passion? ~Erica Jong

All this pitting of sex against sex, of quality against quality; all this claiming of superiority and imputing of inferiority belong to the private-school stage of human existence where there are sides, and it is necessary for one side to beat another side. ~Virginia Woolf, A Room of One's Own, 1929

It was we, the people; not we, the white male citizens; nor yet we, the male citizens; but we, the whole people, who formed the Union.... Men, their rights and nothing more; women, their rights and nothing less. ~Susan B. Anthony

I've yet to be on a campus where most women weren't worrying about some aspect of combining marriage, children, and a career. I've yet to find one where many men were worrying about the same thing. ~Gloria Steinem

Every time we liberate a woman, we liberate a man. ~Margaret Mead

Whether women are better than men I cannot say - but I can say they are certainly no worse. ~Golda Meir

How important it is for us to recognize and celebrate our heroes and she-roes! ~Maya Angelou, in Chris Orr, "Moms and Whoopi: Pioneers of Black Theater," Plexus, November 1983

To me, "sexual freedom" means freedom from having to have sex. ~Lily Tomlin