Feminism

• If particular care and attention is not paid to the ladies, we are determined to foment a rebellion, and will not hold ourselves bound by any laws in which we have no voice or representation. --Abigail Adams

• We ask justice, we ask equality, we ask that all civil and political rights that belong to the citizens of the United States be guaranteed to us and our daughters forever. --Susan B. Anthony

• Men, their rights, and nothing more; women, their rights, and nothing less. --Susan B. Anthony

• 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. --Susan B. Anthony

• Does feminist mean "large unpleasant person who'll shout at you" or "someone who believes women are human beings"? To me it's the latter, so I sign up. --Margaret Atwood

• We've got a generation now who were born with semiequality. They don't know how it was before, so they think, this isn't too bad. We're working. We have our attache' cases and our three-piece suits. I get very disgusted with the younger generation of women. We had a torch to pass, and they are just sitting there. They don't realize it can be taken away. Things are going to have to get worse before they join in fighting the battle. --Erma Bombeck

• The basic discovery about any people is the discovery of the relationship between its men and its women. --Pearl S. Buck

• If divorce has increased by one thousand percent, don't blame the women's movement. Blame the obsolete sex roles on which our marriages were based. --Betty Friedan speech, New York City, January 20, 1974

• Women do not have to sacrifice personhood if they are mothers. They do not have to sacrifice motherhood in order to be persons. Liberation was meant to expand women's opportunities, not to limit them. The self-esteem that has been found in new pursuits can also be found in mothering. --Elaine Heffner

• Feminists are desperately anxious to prove that women are as strong as capable as men. Clearly they are nagged by a fear that women may NOT be as strong and as capable as men. --Ted Kaczynski , pt. 14 in the Unabomber 's manifesto

• I became a feminist as an alternative to becoming a masochist. --Sally Kempton , journalist

• Feminism is the radical notion that women are human beings. --Cheris Kramerae , author of A Feminist Dictionary, 1996

• When we talk about equal pay for equal work, women in the workplace are beginning to catch up. If we keep going at this current rate, we will achieve full equality in about 475 years. I don't know about you, but I can't wait that long. --Lya Sorano

• This is no simple reform. It really is a revolution. Sex and race because they are easy and visible differences have been the primary ways of organizing human beings into superior and inferior groups and into the cheap labour in 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. --Gloria Steinem

• A feminist is anyone who recognizes the equality and full humanity of women and men. --Gloria Steinem

• I will feel equality has arrived when we can elect to office women who are as incompetent as some of the men who are already there. --Maureen Reagan

• [Feminism is] a socialist, anti-family, political movement that encourages women to leave their husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism and become lesbians. --Pat Robertson, 1992 Republican National Convention

• 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 doormat, or a prostitute. --Rebecca West , 1913

• In women, courage is often mistaken for insanity. --a doctor in Iron Jawed Angels

• Remember, Ginger Rogers did everything Fred Astaire did, but she did it backwards and in high heels. --Faith Whittlesey