Gloria Steinem Quotes

A movement happens when people are inspired by somebody, but they do it themselves. You don't wait for someone else. You do it yourself.

I just think that culturally, women - we're all human beings - but at least we don't have our masculinity to prove.

I always thought that "humanist" was a good word long before I understood that anyone thought it was a bad word.

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

Transformation happens in small groups. Each person can speak and all listen.

Every revolution begins as consciousness because some group of people has to imagine change.

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

I do think it's important that there are feminist publications that are not dependent or only marginally dependent on advertising.

When you say something in a wrong group - it will never be right, so you can not say anything wrong, when you don't belong to a group.

Looking at traditional marriages, it seems the surest way for a woman to be alone is to get married.

There is always one true inner voice. Trust it.

A rejection of the way a woman speaks is often a way of blaming or dismissing her without dealing with the content of what she is saying.

I believe that change comes from the bottom, not the top.

Most writers write to say something about other people - and it doesn't last. Good writers write to find out about themselves - and it lasts forever.

If men started taking care of children, the job will become more valuable.

Only when women rebel against patriarchal standards does female muscle become more accepted.

Writers - we're a little crazy about how much we care about it. We spend a lot of time fussing. At least, I do.

Human beings are communal beings and we can't exist or prosper by ourselves. We need each other's support.

Writing is always harder than talking.

You do have all five sense when you're in a room together. You communicate and understand each other in a much deeper way. It is a different form of communication from writing or being on the web.

Don't worry about your background, whether it's odd or ordinary, use it, build on it.

Labeling makes the invisible visible, but it's limiting. Categories are the enemy of connecting. Link, don't rank.

I always trust the microcosm over the macrocosm.

We have to learn to stand up for our interests. To seek purity is self-defeating and a stereotype in itself: women have to be pure, women are not concerned about money.

You're a unique person. You should do what you're suited to do. We all should. It's the only way to be happy. That pressure is all outside. It's external.

The highest use of the Web is getting the information and identifying the places and the possibility of being together physically.

I can't tell the difference between my work life and my private life - it's all the same to me.

Anybody who has ever met a baby knows there is already a person in there.

In the late '60s, people were saying we need power to, not power over. Power to do, accomplish, create, not power over other people.

More and more men are raising children or want to be close to their kids. They don't want to just lead work-obsessed lives and end up 50 years later with an engraved watch.

The idea that women don't smell fine on our own is a problem.

You have no choice but to live in the present, if you're really being open to events and people as they come along.

Go out and find your own stories.That is what I want to tell you.

To punish the individual for the sins of the system makes no sense. We're responsible for changing it, yes. But we can't actually invent another universe, so we have to start where we are.

I would say that reproductive freedom comes first, then violence and economics.

It still may take some explaining, but many more women are keeping their birth names (and not calling them maiden names, with all the sexual double standards that implies).

The need to treat ourselves as well as we treat others. It's women's version of the Golden Rule.

We teach what we need to learn.

Too much of our lives corresponds to the 'lost-wallet' theory of life. You lose something, spend a long time finding it, and then feel grateful to be back where you started.

We will live to see the day that St. Patrick's Cathedral is a child-care center and the pope is no longer a disgrace to the skirt that he has on.

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

Power in this country is often like hemophilia; it passes through women and then men get it.

why is the word 'qualified' applied only to those who have to be more so?

Being able to support oneself allows one to choose a marriage out of love and not just economic dependence. It also allows one to risk that marriage.

Our children are the only people on whom we can safely take revenge for what was done to us.

We need to unlearn some of our respect for education, since it has undermined our respect for ourselves.

Perhaps the worst thing about suffering is that it finally hardens the hearts of those around it.

I'm still the same person who grew up mostly in a Midwestern, factory-working neighborhood where talk about "self-esteem" would have seemed like a luxury.

Some women and men seem to need each other.

I did not see any way that I could possibly give birth to someone else and also give birth to myself. Far from feeling guilty, it was the first time that I had taken responsibility for my own life.