Gloria Steinem Quotes

141 Sourced Quotes

Nothing will happen automatically. Change depends on what you and I do every day.

Gloria Steinem
Women may be the one group that grows more radical with age.

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

Gloria Steinem
Why is the word 'qualified' applied only to those who have to be more so?

Gloria Steinem
I have met brave women who are exploring the outer edge of human possibility, with no history to guide them, and the courage to make themselves vulnerable that I find moving beyond words.

Gloria Steinem
I can sometimes deal with men as equals and therefore can afford to like them.

Gloria Steinem
Many of us have raised our daughters more like our sons, but too few have raised our sons more like our daughters.

Gloria Steinem
Even when educators survey grade school texts and create new bibliographies to help teachers include Asians, Eskimos, and other Americans, females in and out of those groups may be down-played or forgotten.

Gloria Steinem
Why are women raped far away (say, Bosnia) called victims, while those raped nearby (say, a local campus) are playing victim politics?

Gloria Steinem
Regarding the idea that the women's movement is white and middle class — a fair share of the country is white and middle class. And certainly, there are racist white women. Certainly, there are sexist black men. All those things are true. But the other thing that's never said is that black women are much more likely to support feminist issues than white women. It makes sense because they're much more likely to be on the paid labor force than white women. And if you've experienced discrimination for one reason, you're probably more likely to recognize it for another reason.

Gloria Steinem
Someone once asked me why women don't gamble as much as men do, and I gave the commonsensical answer that we don't have as much money. That was a true but incomplete answer. In fact, women's total instinct for gambling is satisfied by marriage.

Gloria Steinem
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.

Gloria Steinem
For me, writing is the only thing that passes the three tests of metier: (1) when I'm doing it, I don't feel that I should be doing something else instead: (2) it produces a sense of accomplishment and, nce in a while, pride; and (3) it's frightening.

Gloria Steinem
The alternative to being a feminist is being a masochist.

Gloria Steinem
The less powerful group usually knows the powerful one much better than vice versa — blacks have had to understand whites in order to survive, women have had to know men — yet the powerful group can afford to regard the less powerful one as a mystery.

Gloria Steinem
Once we give up searching for approval we often find it easier to earn respect.

Gloria Steinem
As the little boy said when asked if he wanted to be a lawyer like his mother, "Oh no, that's women's work." Logic has nothing to do with oppression.

Gloria Steinem
You never know which thing you do is going to turn out to be important. I'm sure we've all done very small things that had very great impact and very big things that didn't make any difference. So, create the means that best reflect the ends we want. Try to make each moment authentic, and you'll get to an authentic end.

Gloria Steinem
What would happen if we listened to children as much as we talked to them?

Gloria Steinem
Nature doesn't move in a straight line, and as part of nature, neither do we.

Gloria Steinem
The authority of any governing institution must stop at its citizens' skin.

Gloria Steinem
I don't know if fury can compete with necessity as the mother of invention, but I recommend it.

Gloria Steinem
Power can be taken, but not given. The process of the taking is empowerment in itself.

Gloria Steinem
Dancing has been a way of lifting the human spirit since the beginning of time.

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

Gloria Steinem
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.

Gloria Steinem
It's a big gift to be recognizable as part of something that matters to people, but that's not the same as being responsible for something.

Gloria Steinem
Self-hatred leads to the need either to dominate or to be dominated.

Gloria Steinem
Her searches after knowledge were arbitrary and without context. It was as if she were shining a small flashlight of curiosity into the dark room of the world.

Gloria Steinem
A movement is only composed of people moving. To feel its warmth and motion around us is the end as well as the means.

Gloria Steinem