Great Throughts Treasury

"The whole idea is not to figure out what you should do that will matter, but to make each thing you do reflect the values you want, because we don't know what's going to matter in the future."

"The surest way to be alone is to get married"

"The same idea of masculinity that says you have to dominate women says you have to dominate nature, and that becomes the source of evils visited on the environment."

"The real reasons for genital mutilation can only be understood in the context of the patriarchy: men must control women's bodies as the means of production, and thus repress the independent power of women's sexuality."

"The reason women's magazines look the way they look is much less about readers than it is about advertisers. Advertisers simply won't place ads in women's magazines unless you write about their products."

"There are really not many jobs that actually require a penis or a vagina, and all other occupations should be open to everyone."

"There are many more people trying to meet the right person than to become the right person."

"This is no simple reform. It really is a revolution. Sex and race, because they are easy, visible differences, have been the primary ways of organizing human beings into superior and inferior groups, and into the cheap labor on which this system still depends. We are talking about a society in which there will be no roles other than those chosen, or those earned. We are really talking about humanism."

"This idea of doing it all is the enemy of equality, not the path to do it. It's impossible to do two full-time jobs, and an impossible definition of success is just another way of making women feel like failures... Any definition of success has to include social policies that honor families and men who raise babies as much as women do."

"There is a healthier self within each of us, just waiting for encouragement."

"This is what fifty looks like. We’ve been lying so long, who would know?"

"To think of taking our place in nature instead of conquering it is a deep change in the way we see ourselves and the world."

"We are becoming the men we wanted to marry"

"Unless we include a job as part of every citizen's right to autonomy and personal fulfillment, women will continue to be vulnerable to someone else's idea of what need is."

"We are also communal creatures who are born before our brains are fully developed, so we're very sensitive to our environment. The question is: How to find the support and the circumstances that allow you to express what's inside you?"

"Violence only produces violent people."

"We are talking about a society in which there will be no roles other than those chosen or those earned. We are really talking about humanism."

"We are the women our parents warned us against, and we are proud."

"We don't have to reinvent the wheel, just rediscover it."

"We can tell our values by looking at our checkbook stubs."

"We know that we can do what men can do, but we still don't know that men can do what women can do. That's absolutely crucial. We can't go on doing two jobs."

"We teach what we need to learn and write what we need to know."

"We need to remember across generations that there is as much to learn as there is to teach."

"We, all of us, men and women alike, have more to unlearn than to learn."

"We'll never solve the feminization of power until we solve the masculinity of wealth."

"We've begun to raise daughters more like sons, but few have the courage to raise our sons more like our daughters."

"What has the women's movement learned from [Geraldine Ferraro's] candidacy for vice president? Never get married."

"We're not separate from nature — it's not "man conquering nature," it's people as part of nature saving ourselves."

"Whatever small change we make will be like a pebble in a pond, it will reverberate outward."

"Whatever you want to do, just do it... Making a damn fool of yourself is absolutely essential."

"Why are solutions not just as newsworthy as problems? The notion that hostility is necessary all the time to create interest and news is not going to help us come to agreements and solve the huge problems we have."

"Women are always saying, “We can do anything that men can do.” But Men should be saying, “We can do anything that women can do.”"

"When the past dies, there is mourning, but when the future dies our imaginations are compelled to carry it on."

"Wisdom too often remains in our heads. Only experience can make it a visceral part of our daily lives by bridging the distance from head to heart."

"Women have two choices: Either she's a feminist or a masochist."

"Women have convinced ourselves that we can do what men can do. But we haven't convinced ourselves and therefore haven't convinced our country, that men can do what women can do."

"Women are not going to be equal outside the home until men are equal in it."

"Women's total instinct for gambling is satisfied by marriage"

"Work is valued by the social value of the worker."

"Writing is the only thing that when I do it, I don't feel I should be doing something else."

"You can't lose old and negative ways of thinking until new and positive ones replace them."