Quotes by 20th-century Women

Madonna

Marilyn Monroe

Anne Frank

Elizabeth II

J. K. Rowling

Margaret Thatcher

Audrey Hepburn

You can't accomplish anything worthwhile if you inhibit yourself

There are hurts so deep that one cannot reach them or heal them with words.

There cannot be peaceful coexistence in the ideological realm. Peaceful coexistence corrupts.

You can only perceive real beauty in a person as they get older.

Expecting to be able to get rid of the competitive drive, first of all, flies in the face of human nature — and little girls certainly have this drive, as much as little boys do, or at least the little girls I have observed in my immediate family have it.

My studies gave me only a very superficial knowledge of philosophy but sharpened my interest in it. I benefited greatly from being a teacher—that is, from being able to spend a great deal of time reading, writing and educating myself.

Simone de Beauvoir

Housework is a breeze. Cooking is a pleasant diversion. Putting up a retaining wall is a lark. But teaching is like climbing a mountain.

Many prefer not to exercise their imaginations at all. They choose to remain comfortably within the bounds of their own experience, never troubling to wonder how it would feel to have been born other than they are.

Keeping books on charity is capitalist nonsense! I just use the money for the poor. I can't stop to count it.

When I say I want to photograph someone, what it really means is that I'd like to know them. Anyone I know I photograph.

Annie Leibovitz

While bringing about reforms and improving institutions, we have to be cautious that while shaking the tree to remove the bad fruit, we do not bring down the tree itself.

The type of fig leaf which each culture employs to cover its social taboos offers a twofold description of its morality. It reveals that certain unacknowledged behavior exists and it suggests the form that such behavior takes.

No Western nation has to build a wall round itself to keep its people in.

Margaret Thatcher

When you least expect it, someone may actually listen to what you have to say.

I was never happy in Hollywood. There, everything is distorted by the importance people give to money.

Come on girls! Do you believe in love? Cause I got something to say about it.

I've made forty-three pictures. Naturally I'm adorable in all of them.

Katharine Hepburn

It's not the most intellectual job in the world, but I do have to know the letters.

Somebody, after all, had to make a start. What we wrote and said is also believed by many others. They just don't dare express themselves as we did.

I have to be alone very often. I'd be quite happy if I spent from Saturday night until Monday morning alone in my apartment. That's how I refuel.

As far as I can make out, women's friendships with each other are based on a gush of lies and pretty speeches that mean nothing. You'd think they were all wolves trying to seduce each other the way they flatter and flirt when they're together.

For more than eight decades, Washington has been my hometown.... It is a city that offers me more people — more different kinds of people — than I could otherwise possibly have come to know in a lifetime: the native Washingtonian, the local merchant, the foreign diplomat, the ever-present tourist, the public servant, the journalist, the president, the friend.

Katharine Graham

Because "We The People" have the power to build a better future. And when our very democracy was on the ballot in this election, with the very soul of America at stake, and the world watching, you ushered in a new day for America.

It comes with faith, for with complete faith there is no fear of what faces you in life or death.

Jacqueline Cochran

Our very strength as lesbians lies in the fact that we are outside of patriarchy; our existence challenges its life.

Charlotte Bunch