Gloria Steinem Quotes

American activist and journalist (born 1934)

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Gloria Marie Steinem (born March 25, 1934) is an American feminist, journalist, and social and political activist who became nationally recognized as a leader of, and media spokeswoman for, the women's liberation movement in the late 1960s and 1970s. A prominent writer and key counterculture era political figure, Steinem has founded many organizations and projects and has been the recipient of many awards and honors. She is a former columnist for New York magazine and co-founded Ms. magazine.

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Birth Name: Gloria Marie Steinem

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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.

"If each person in the room promises that in the twenty-four hours beginning the very next day she or he will do at least one outrageous thing in the name of simple justice, then I promise I will, too. It doesn't matter whether the act is as small as saying, "Pick yourself up" (a major step for those of us who have been our family's servants) or as large as calling for a strike. The point is that, if each of us does as promised, we can be pretty sure of two results. First, the world one day later won't be quite the same.
Second, we will have such a good time doing it that we will never again get up in the morning saying, "WILL I do anything outrageous?" but only "WHAT outrageous act will I do today

The root of oppression is the loss of memory.

In most societies, a woman is encouraged to give birth to another person more than she is encouraged to give birth to herself.

I began to understand with a terrible sureness that we teach what we need to learn and write what we need to know.

Voting isn't the most we can do, but the least. To have a democracy, you have to want one.

The driver, an old Irish woman, the only such cabbie I’ve ever seen, turned to us at a traffic light and said the immortal words, “Honey, if men could get pregnant, abortion would be a sacrament!

To transform inequality in the outside world, we have to start inside the home. We have to get rid of the old idea that what happens to men is political, and therefore subject to change, but what happens to women is cultural, and therefore can’t, or shouldn’t, be changed.

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

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

Instead of either/or, I discovered a whole world of and.

However sugarcoated and ambiguous, every form of authoritarianism must
start with a belief in some group's greater right to power, whether that
right is justified by sex, race, class, religion or all four. However
far it may expand, the progression inevitably rests on unequal power
and airtight roles within the family.

If I could, I would leave an open space for your story on every page.

Rich People plan for three generations
Poor people plan for Saturday night

[the] idea that sexuality is only okay if it ends in reproduction oppresses women—whose health de-pends on separating sexuality from reproduction—as well as gay men and lesbians.