c2p-cmd/Good-Quotes-Authors huggingface dataset:
the illusion that power lies within the hands of the common man is more important than legitimate efficiency within the government.
— Evan Meekins, The Black Banner
My heart started racing, not the bad kind of heart racing, like I'm going to die. But the good kind of heart racing, like, Hello, can I help you with something? If not, please step aside because I'm about to kick the shit out of life.
— Maria Semple, Where'd You Go, Bernadette
I just don't want them to change me, if I'm going to die I still want to be me.
— Suzanne Collins, The Hunger Games
Humans like stories. Humans need stories. Stories are good. Stories work. Story clarifies and captures the essence of the human spirit. Story, in all its forms—of life, of love, of knowledge—has traced the upward surge of mankind. And story, you mark my words, will be with the last human to draw breath.
— Jasper Fforde, First Among Sequels
The type of mind that can understand good fiction is not necessarily the educated mind, but it is at all times the kind of mind that is willing to have its sense of mystery deepened by contact with reality, and its sense of reality deepened by contact with mystery.
— Flannery O'Connor, Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose
Memories, made to last forever<3
— Paula Morris, Unbroken
I have never battled a gargoyle before.” Zacharel shook his head, a dark lock of hair tumbling into one emerald eye. Damp from the melting snow, the hair stuck to his skin. He didn’t seem to notice. “But I am certain these will murder Paris before willingly carrying him inside.”As if he were the only intelligent life form left in existence, William splayed his arms. “And the problem with that? He’ll still be inside, exactly where he wants to be. And by the way,” he added, blinking at Paris with lashes so long they should have belonged to a girl. “Your new permanent eyeliner is very pretty. You’ll make a good-looking corpse.”Do not react. He did, and the teasing about his ash/ambrosia tattoos would never end. “Thanks.”“I prefer the lip liner, though. A nice little feminine touch that really makes your eyes pop.”“Again, thanks,” he gritted.He wants us!Stupid demon.William grinned. “Maybe we can make out later. I know you want me.”Tell him yes!Not another word out of you, or—“Paris? Warrior?” Zacharel said. “Are youlistening to me?”“No.”Zach nodded, apparently not the least offended. “I enjoy your honesty, though I believe you suffer from what the humans call ADD.”“Oh, yeah. I definitely have attention deficient demon.
— Gena Showalter, The Darkest Seduction
William slapped him on the shoulder, sending Sex into rapturous convulsions. “Before we do this, I’ve got one question for you. And you can’t lie. This is too important.”A bit sick to his stomach at what such a debaucher could want to know, Paris cast his attention to the black-haired, blue-eyed he-devil. “Ask.”“Are you going to suggest I kiss you for good luck or strength or whatever it is your sex demon needs?”That earned the warrior a two-fingered salute.“So that’s a no?” William asked.Paris worked his jaw. “Here, let me help you off the cliff to the drawbridge.” With no more warning, he shoved William over the ledge. He thought he heard a fading, “ So not cool,” from the bastard as he fell…fell…Splat.
— Gena Showalter, The Darkest Seduction
You again,” she said, and she did not sound happy.“I know,” the warrior replied with a heartfelt sigh. “You’re so lucky to see me twice in one day. You’re honored by my presence, yada, yada, heard it all before. Let’s just move on, shall we. I don’t handle fawning very well.
— Gena Showalter, The Darkest Seduction
Suddenly William loomed over him, scowling, snarling and bloody, his suit dirt-stained and ripped. “Do you know. How many strands. Of hair I lost. On my way down?”Whatever. “Math was never my thing, but I’m gonna say you lost…a lot.”Electric-blues glittered with menace. “You are a cruel, sadistic bastard. My hair needs TLC and you…you… Damn you! I’ve gutted men for less.”“I know. I’ve watched you.” Paris lumbered to his feet and scanned the rocky bank they stood upon, the crimson ocean lapping and bubbling in every direction. The drawbridge was only a fifty-yard dash away. “Don’t kill the messenger, but I’m thinking you should change your dating profile to balding.”Masculine cheeks went scarlet as the big bad warrior struggled for a comeback.… “One of these days you’re going to wake up,” William finally said, “and I will have shaved you. Everywhere.”“Won’t make a difference. Women will still want me. But you know what else? What I did to you wasn’t cruel, Willy.” He offered the warrior a white-flag grin. A trick. A lie. “This, however, is.”He grabbed William by the wrist, swung the man around and around before at last releasing him and hurling his body directly onto the bridge.
— Gena Showalter, The Darkest Seduction
The pursuit of truth, not of facts, is the business of fiction.
— Oakley Hall, Warlock
Friendship is just love that has yet to sprout wings and take flight.
— Kristen Reed, The Kings' Council
The web is a dangerous place for a mind begging to slack off and be distracted by nonsense.
— Michelle M. Pillow
People should know better than to be an ass in front of writers. We immortalize things. Lots of things. And we take liberties with character descriptions.
— Michelle M. Pillow
Jack gave her a fierce look. “Your mother gave up the best thing she had in her life. I know you miss her, I know you’re confused and have all sorts of questions for her. But you’re better than her, Lola, you’re better than all of this.  “She wronged you, not the other way around. You didn’t do anything wrong. You didn’t deserve what happened to you. She’s the one that needs to feel bad, not you.  “Sometimes there are no answers. You have to accept that. Maybe you’ll never know what you think you need to know, but do you really need to know all the details, really? You know she wasn’t there when you needed her, she still isn’t here when you need her, but look around, Lola.” Jack opened his arms wide. “You got me. You got your aunt. Jared. Sebastian. Rachel. Even Isabelle.  “You need to realize that and move on, as best you can. I had to realize that myself. When you let go of the pain and hurt and unanswered questions, Lola, then you’ll be okay. You’re safe now.” Jack pressed a kiss to her forehead. “You’re safe now. Remember that. Believe that.
— Lindy Zart, Safe and Sound
...I retreat into my fictional world where everything makes sense - but even there I can't even control what people do...
— John Geddes
My cat mocks me frequently. It's the universe's way of keeping me from getting too big of an ego.
— Michelle M. Pillow
Language is music. Written words are musical notation. The music of a piece of fiction establishes the way in which it is to be read, and, in the largest sense, what it means. It is essential to remember that characters have a music as well, a pitch and tempo, just as real people do. To make them believable, you must always be aware of what they would or would not say, where stresses would or would not fall.
— Marilynne Robinson, When I Was a Child I Read Books
Mankind has a mandate to care for the earth and all that is within it, especially the animals, and an animal should never be placed in a position where he needs to be concerned about such things. But this is not that time.
— Tara Pollard, Season's Christmas Quest: The Dog's Story
Try to be someone upon whom nothing is lost!
— Henry James
What will I do if I find myself with a heart?" "Lose it constantly, I imagine.
— Gregory Maguire
Of course, the fact that Dostoevsky can tell a juicy story isn’t enough to make him great. If it were, Judith Krantz and John Grisham would be great fiction writers, and by any but the most commercial standards they’re not even very good.
— David Foster Wallace, Consider the Lobster and Other Essays
If a lioness spends her hours pacing back and forth in a cage of gold with the finest meats at her disposal, does that make her any less of a prisoner? If that same feline’s fangs are filed down to blunt, un-tearing teeth and her roar is silenced, can she still be called a lioness?
— Kristen Reed, The Kings' Council
I am going to show you great and mighty things which no one has ever seen before.... I am going to take you places where no one has ever been. I am going to take you to heights where no one has ever reached. If you will only come to me with all your heart, I will do a mighty work in you, which no man can undo but yourself.
— M.J. Chrisman, The Remnant: The Legend of the Seer
A time will come in your life, William, where your faith will be tested... and you must stay faithful to the word and vision that the All-Father has given to you.
— M.J. Chrisman, The Remnant: The Legend of the Seer
It is you I foreknew and have predestined for such a time as this. Just as My heart has so eagerly chosen you, William Ore, you must also choose me.
— M.J. Chrisman, The Remnant: The Legend of the Seer
Advice from a Romance Writer: Guys, make your woman feel pretty even on an 'off' day. Trust me, good things will come of it.
— Michelle M. Pillow
Collecting the Wings Of Pain ~ The Sordid Stings Of Love Is all I Gain- Munish Maya
— Munish Maya
Living in that castle was like being condemned to Hell before I’d even had the opportunity to sin.
— Kristen Reed, The Kings' Council
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.
— Rebecca West
I hate men who are afraid of women's strength.
— Anaïs Nin, Henry and June: From "A Journal of Love"--The Unexpurgated Diary of Anaïs Nin
I am too intelligent, too demanding, and too resourceful for anyone to be able to take charge of me entirely. No one knows me or loves me completely. I have only myself
— Simone de Beauvoir
Men are afraid that women will laugh at them. Women are afraid that men will kill them.
— Margaret Atwood
It's not my responsibility to be beautiful. I'm not alive for that purpose. My existence is not about how desirable you find me.
— Warsan Shire
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, The Letters of John and Abigail Adams
We teach girls to shrink themselves, to make themselves smaller. We say to girls, you can have ambition, but not too much. You should aim to be successful, but not too successful. Otherwise, you would threaten the man. Because I am female, I am expected to aspire to marriage. I am expected to make my life choices always keeping in mind that marriage is the most important. Now marriage can be a source of joy and love and mutual support but why do we teach girls to aspire to marriage and we don’t teach boys the same? We raise girls to see each other as competitors not for jobs or accomplishments, which I think can be a good thing, but for the attention of men. We teach girls that they cannot be sexual beings in the way that boys are.
— Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, We Should All Be Feminists
He is a gentleman, and I am a gentleman's daughter. So far we are equal.
— Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
It is in vain to say human beings ought to be satisfied with tranquillity: they must have action; and they will make it if they cannot find it. Millions are condemned to a stiller doom than mine, and millions are in silent revolt against their lot. Nobody knows how many rebellions besides political rebellions ferment in the masses of life which people earth. Women are supposed to be very calm generally: but women feel just as men feel; they need exercise for their faculties, and a field for their efforts, as much as their brothers do; they suffer from too rigid a restraint, to absolute a stagnation, precisely as men would suffer; and it is narrow-minded in their more privileged fellow-creatures to say that they ought to confine themselves to making puddings and knitting stockings, to playing on the piano and embroidering bags. It is thoughtless to condemn them, or laugh at them, if they seek to do more or learn more than custom has pronounced necessary for their sex.
— Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre
It is easier to live through someone else than to complete yourself. The freedom to lead and plan your own life is frightening if you have never faced it before. It is frightening when a woman finally realizes that there is no answer to the question 'who am I' except the voice inside herself.
— Betty Friedan
I am a WomanPhenomenally.Phenomenal Woman,that's me.
— Maya Angelou
I'm not a concept. Too many guys think I'm a concept or I complete them or I'm going to 'make them alive'…but I'm just a fucked up girl who's looking for my own peace of mind. Don't assign me yours.
— Charlie Kaufman, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind: The Shooting Script
Feminism has never been about getting a job for one woman. It's about making life more fair for women everywhere. It's not about a piece of the existing pie
—  there are too many of us for that. It's about baking a new pie.
If any female feels she need anything beyond herself to legitimate and validate her existence, she is already giving away her power to be self-defining, her agency.
— bell hooks, Feminism is for Everybody: Passionate Politics
In every generation there is a chosen one. She alone will stand against the vampires the demons and the forces of darkness. She is the slayer.
— Joss Whedon
No one is more arrogant toward women, more aggressive or scornful, than the man who is anxious about his virility.
— Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex
You can tell whether some misogynistic societal pressure is being exerted on women by calmly enquiring, ‘And are the men doing this, as well?’ If they aren’t, chances are you’re dealing with what we strident feminists refer to as ‘some total fucking bullshit’.
— Caitlin Moran, How to Be a Woman
So you choose him?''Cal betrayed me, and I betrayed him. And you betrayed us both, in a thousand different ways.' The words are heavy as stone but right. So right. 'I choose no one.
— Victoria Aveyard, Red Queen
Whatever women do they must do twice as well as men to be thought half as good. Luckily, this is not difficult.
— Charlotte Whitton
A beautiful woman looking at her image in the mirror may very well believe the image is herself. An ugly woman knows it is not.
— Simone Weil, Waiting for God
I'm not a humanitarian, I'm a hell-raiser. 
— Mary Harris Jones
Guilt is not a response to anger; it is a response to one’s own actions or lack of action. If it leads to change then it can be useful, since it is then no longer guilt but the beginning of knowledge. Yet all too often, guilt is just another name for impotence, for defensiveness destructive of communication; it becomes a device to protect ignorance and the continuation of things the way they are, the ultimate protection for changelessness.
— Audre Lorde, Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches
Felicity ignores us. She walks out to them, an apparition in white and blue velvet, her head held high as they stare in awe at her, the goddess. I don't know yet what power feels like. But this is surely what it looks like, and I think I'm beginning to understand why those ancient women had to hide in caves. Why our parents and suitors want us to behave properly and predictably. It's not that they want to protect us; it's that they fear us.
— Libba Bray, A Great and Terrible Beauty
As a woman you are better off in life earning your own money. You couldn't prevent your husband from leaving you or taking another wife, but you could have some of your dignity if you didn't have to beg him for financial support.
— Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Infidel
The desirable virgin is sexy but not sexual. She's young, white, and skinny. She's a cheerleader, a babysitter; she's accessible and eager to please (remember those ethics of passivity!). She's never a woman of color. SHe's never a low-income girl or a fat girl. She's never disabled. "Virgin" is a designation for those who meet a certain standard of what women, especially young women, are supposed to look like. As for how these young women are supposed to act? A blank slate is best.
— Jessica Valenti, The Purity Myth: How America's Obsession with Virginity is Hurting Young Women
The process begins with the individual woman’s acceptance that American women, without exception, are socialized to be racist, classist and sexist, in varying degrees, and that labeling ourselves feminists does not change the fact that we must consciously work to rid ourselves of the legacy of negative socialization.
— bell hooks, Ain't I a Woman: Black Women and Feminism
...her wings are cut and then she is blamed for not knowing how to fly.
— Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex
For throughout history, you can read the stories of women who - against all the odds - got being a woman right, but ended up being compromised, unhappy, hobbled or ruined, because all around them, society was still wrong. Show a girl a pioneering hero - Sylvia Plath, Dorothy Parker, Frida Kahlo, Cleopatra, Boudicca, Joan of Arc - and you also, more often than not, show a girl a woman who was eventually crushed.
— Caitlin Moran, How to Be a Woman
What is feminism? Simply the belief that women should be as free as men, however nuts, dim, deluded, badly dressed, fat, receding, lazy and smug they might be. Are you a feminist? Hahaha. Of course you are.
— Caitlin Moran, How to Be a Woman
For I conclude that the enemy is not lipstick, but guilt itself; that we deserve lipstick, if we want it, AND free speech; we deserve to be sexual AND serious--or whatever we please; we are entitled to wear cowboy boots to our own revolution.
— Naomi Wolf
I love being single. It's almost like being rich.
— Sue Grafton
Whisky, gambling and Ferraris are better than housework.
— Françoise Sagan
Emotional neglect lays the groundwork for the emotional numbing that helps boys feel better about being cut off. Eruptions of rage in boys are most often deemed normal, explained by the age-old justification for adolescent patriarchal misbehavior, "Boys will be boys." Patriarchy both creates the rage in boys and then contains it for later use, making it a resource to exploit later on as boys become men. As a national product, this rage can be garnered to further imperialism, hatred and oppression of women and men globally. This rage is needed if boys are to become men willing to travel around the world to fight wars without ever demanding that other ways of solving conflict can be found.
— bell hooks
I'm going to ask you to remember the prostituted, the homeless, the battered, the raped, the tortured, the murdered, the raped-then-murdered, the murdered-then-raped; and I am going to ask you to remember the photographed, the ones that any or all of the above happened to and it was photographed and now the photographs are for sale in our free countries. I want you to think about those who have been hurt for the fun, the entertainment, the so-called speech of others; those who have been hurt for profit, for the financial benefit of pimps and entrepreneurs. I want you to remember the perpetrator and I am going to ask you to remember the victims: not just tonight but tomorrow and the next day. I want you to find a way to include them -- the perpetrators and the victims -- in what you do, how you think, how you act, what you care about, what your life means to you.Now, I know, in this room, some of you are the women I have been talking about. I know that. People around you may not. I am going to ask you to use every single thing you can remember about what was done to you -- how it was done, where, by whom, when, and, if you know -- why -- to begin to tear male dominance to pieces, to pull it apart, to vandalize it, to destabilize it, to mess it up, to get in its way, to fuck it up. I have to ask you to resist, not to comply, to destroy the power men have over women, to refuse to accept it, to abhor it and to do whatever is necessary despite its cost to you to change it.
— Andrea Dworkin
Very early on in writing the series, I remember a female journalist saying to me that Mrs Weasley, 'Well, you know, she’s just a mother.' And I was absolutely incensed by that comment. Now, I consider myself to be a feminist, and I’d always wanted to show that just because a woman has made a choice, a free choice to say, 'Well, I’m going to raise my family and that’s going to be my choice. I may go back to a career, I may have a career part time, but that’s my choice.' Doesn’t mean that that’s all she can do. And as we proved there in that little battle, Molly Weasley comes out and proves herself the equal of any warrior on that battlefield.
— J.K. Rowling
When men are oppressed, it's a tragedy. When women are oppressed, it's tradition.
— Letty Cottin Pogrebin, Deborah, Golda, and Me: Being Female and Jewish in America
A slut is someone, usually a woman, who’s stepped outside of the very narrow lane that good girls are supposed to stay within. Sluts are loud. We’re messy. We don’t behave. In fact, the original definition of “slut” meant “untidy woman.” But since we live in a world that relies on women to be tidy in all ways, to be quiet and obedient and agreeable and available (but never aggressive), those of us who color outside of the lines get called sluts. And that word is meant to keep us in line.
— Jaclyn Friedman
While falling in love is fun, it's not everything, and it's not the antidote to an unfulfilled life, despite what Reese Witherspoon movies may tell you.
— Jessica Valenti, Full Frontal Feminism
As Robin Morgan wrote so wisely, "Hate generalizes, love specifies". Thats what makes going on the road so important. It definitely specifies.
— Gloria Steinem, My Life on the Road
Male domination is so rooted in our collective unconscious that we no longer even see it.
— Pierre Bourdieu
The bible and the church have been the greatest stumbling block in the way of women's emancipation.
— Elizabeth Cady Stanton
The only way for a woman, as for a man, to find herself, to know herself as a person, is by creative work of her own.
— Betty Friedan, The Feminine Mystique
I think the girl who is able to earn her own living and pay her own way should be as happy as anybody on earth. The sense of independence and security is very sweet.
— Susan B. Anthony
I think that men ought to treat women like something other than weaker men with breasts.
— Jim Butcher, Storm Front
A woman reading Playboy feels a little like a Jew reading a Nazi manual.
— Gloria Steinem
If women want rights more than they got, why don't they just take them, and not be talking about it.
— Sojourner Truth
He cried when I left, which I find to be standard male behavior.
— Emilie Autumn
I myself cried when I got angry, then became unable to explain why I was angry in the first place. Later I would discover this was endemic among female human beings. Anger is supposed to be "unfeminine" so we suppress it -until it overflows. I could see that not speaking up made my mother feel worse. This was my first hint of the truism that depression is anger turned inward; thus women are twice as likely to be depressed. My mother paid a high price for caring so much, yet being able to do so little about it. In this way, she led me toward am activist place where she herself could never go.
— Gloria Steinem, My Life on the Road
If you make some comment even obliquely alluding to menstruation or menopause and its effect on my judgment," Murphy interrupted, "I will break your arm in eleven places.
— Jim Butcher, Changes
...One of the reasons so many women say "I'm not a feminist but..." (and then put forward a feminist position), is that in addition to being stereotyped as man-hating Amazons, feminists have also been cast as antifamily and antimotherhood.
— Susan J. Douglas
Only stupid men would want stupid wives!
— Robert Thier, Storm and Silence
Your body is yours to protect and to enjoy.” She raises both eyebrows at me meaningfully. “Whoever you should choose to partake in that enjoyment, that is your choice, and choose wisely. Every man that ever got to touch me was afforded an honor. A privilege.” Stormy waves her hand over me. “All this? It’s a privilege to worship at this temple, do you understand my meaning? Not just any young fool can approach the throne. Remember my words, Lara Jean. You decide who, how far, and how often, if ever.”“I had no idea you were such a feminist,” I say. “Feminist?” Stormy makes a disgusted sound in her throat. “I’m no feminist. Really, Lara Jean!” “Stormy, don’t get worked up about it. All it means is that you believe men and women are equal, and should have equal rights.” “I don’t think any man is my equal. Women are far superior, and don’t you forget it. Don’t forget any of the things I just told you.
— Jenny Han, P.S. I Still Love You
When we consider that women are treated as property it is degrading to women that we should treat our children as property to be disposed of as we see fit.
— Elizabeth Cady Stanton
When you hear men talking," said Cornelia, "all they ever do is speak ill of women. ... And I don't quite know how they managed to make this law in their favour, or who exactly it was who gave them a greater license to sin than is allowed to us; and if the fault is common to both sexes (as they can hardly deny), why should the blame not be as well? What makes them think they can boast of the same thing that in women brings only shame?
— Moderata Fonte, The Worth of Women: Wherein Is Clearly Revealed Their Nobility and Their Superiority to Men
I would have girls regard themselves not as adjectives but as nouns.
— Elizabeth Cady Stanton
I was the first woman to burn my bra - it took the fire department four days to put it out.
— Dolly Parton
I think when it comes to females in the media you’ll see something that kind of upsets me which is that females are pinned up against each other more so than men. You know, for example like you never see online “vote for who has the better butt - this actor or this actor.” It’s always like this female singer and this female singer. And you get to vote. I mean, it’s daily I see these things and these polls like “let us know who’s sexier, who’s the hotter momma” and I just don’t see it like “who’s the hotter dad” you know? I think that one thing that I do believe as a feminist is that in order for us to have gender equality we have to stop making it a girl fight and we have to stop being so interested in seeing girls trying to tear each other down, it has to be more about cheering each other on as women. That’s just kind of how I feel about it.
— Taylor Swift
This business of womanhood is a heavy burden.
— Tsitsi Dangarembga
All you have to do, I tell myself, is keep your mouth shut and look stupid. It shouldn't be that hard.
— Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid's Tale
..."Fun?" you ask. "Weren't feminists these grim-faced, humorless, antifamily, karate-chopping ninjas who were bitter because they couldn't get a man?" Well, in fact the problem was that all too many of them HAD gotten a man, married him, had his kids, and then discovered that, as mothers, they were never supposed to have their own money, their own identity, their own aspirations, time to pee, or a brain. And yes, some women indeed became bad-tempered as a result. After all, no anger, no social change.
— Susan J. Douglas
For women especially, virginity has become the easy answer- the morality quick fix. You can be vapid, stupid, and unethical, but so long as you've never had sex, you're a "good" (i.e. "moral) girl and therefore worthy of praise.
— Jessica Valenti, The Purity Myth: How America's Obsession with Virginity is Hurting Young Women
I think housework is far more tiring and frightening than hunting is, no comparison, and yet after hunting we had eggs for tea and were made to rest for hours, but after housework people expect one to go on just as if nothing special had happened.
— Nancy Mitford
For too many centuries women have been being muses to artists. I wanted to be the muse, I wanted to be the wife of the artist, but I was really trying to avoid the final issue — that I had to do the job myself.
— Anaïs Nin
The person I am in the company of my sisters has been entirely different from the person I am in the company of other people. Fearless, powerful, surprising, moved as I otherwise am only when I write.
— Franz Kafka, Diaries of Franz Kafka
A part of a healthy conscience is being able to confront consciencelessness. When you teach your daughter, explicitly or by passive rejection, that she must ignore her outrage, that she must be kind and accepting to the point of not defending herself or other people, that she must not rock the boat for any reason, you are NOT strengthening her prosocial sense, you are damaging it--and the first person she will stop protecting is herself.
— Martha Stout, The Sociopath Next Door
But never fear, gentlemen; castration was really not the point of feminism, and we women are too busy eviscerating one another to take you on.
— Anna Quindlen
How can I tell a story we already know too well? Her name was Africa. His was France. He colonized her, exploited her, silenced her, and even decades after it was supposed to have ended, still acted with a high hand in resolving her affairs in places like Côte d'Ivoire, a name she had been given because of her export products, not her own identity.Her name was Asia. His was Europe. Her name was silence. His was power. Her name was poverty. His was wealth. Her name was Her, but what was hers? His name was His, and he presumed everything was his, including her, and he thought be could take her without asking and without consequences. It was a very old story, though its outcome had been changing a little in recent decades. And this time around the consequences are shaking a lot of foundations, all of which clearly needed shaking.Who would ever write a fable as obvious, as heavy-handed as the story we've been given?...His name was privilege, but hers was possibility. His was the same old story, but hers was a new one about the possibility of changing a story that remains unfinished, that includes all of us, that matters so much, that we will watch but also make and tell in the weeks, months, years, decades to come.
— Rebecca Solnit, Men Explain Things to Me
Rules of taste enforce structures of power.
— Susan Sontag
No woman can call herself free who does not own and control her body. No woman can call herself free until she can choose consciously whether she will or will not be a mother.
— Margaret Sanger
If you spend any amount of time doing media analysis, it’s clear that the most frenzied moral panic surrounding young women’s sexuality comes from the mainstream media, which loves to report about how promiscuous girls are, whether they’re acting up on spring break, getting caught topless on camera, or catching all kinds of STIs. Unsurprisingly, these types of articles and stories generally fail to mention that women are attending college at the highest rates in history, and that we’re the majority of undergraduate and master’s students. Well-educated and socially engaged women just don’t make for good headlines, it seems.
— Jessica Valenti, The Purity Myth: How America's Obsession with Virginity is Hurting Young Women
In almost every professional field, in business and in the arts and sciences, women are still treated as second-class citizens. It would be a great service to tell girls who plan to work in society to expect this subtle, uncomfortable discrimination--tell them not to be quiet, and hope it will go away, but fight it. A girl should not expect special privileges because of her sex, but neither should she "adjust" to prejudice and discrimination
— Betty Friedan, The Feminine Mystique
Poor Sasha. Poor girls. The world fattens them on the promise of live. How badly they need it, and how little most of them will ever get. The treacled pop songs, the dresses described in the catalogs with words like 'sunset' and 'Paris.' Then the dreams are taken away with such violent force; the hand wrenching the buttons of the jeans, nobody looking at the man shouting at his girlfriend on the bus
— Emma Cline, The Girls
It's hard not to be a fighter when you're constantly under siege.
— Cassandra Duffy
Being born a woman is my awful tragedy. From the moment I was conceived I was doomed to sprout breasts and ovaries rather than penis and scrotum; to have my whole circle of action, thought and feeling rigidly circumscribed by my inescapable feminity. Yes, my consuming desire to mingle with road crews, sailors and soldiers, bar room regulars--to be a part of a scene, anonymous, listening, recording--all is spoiled by the fact that I am a girl, a female always in danger of assault and battery. My consuming interest in men and their lives is often misconstrued as a desire to seduce them, or as an invitation to intimacy. Yet, God, I want to talk to everybody I can as deeply as I can. I want to be able to sleep in an open field, to travel west, to walk freely at night...
— Sylvia Plath, The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath
There was a time when you were not a slave, remember that. You walked alone, full of laughter, you bathed bare-bellied. You say you have lost all recollection of it, remember . . . You say there are no words to describe this time, you say it does not exist. But remember. Make an effort to remember. Or, failing that, invent.
— Monique Wittig, Les Guérillères
When we were only acquaintances, you let me be myself, but now you're always protecting me... I won't be protected. I will choose for myself what is ladylike and right. To shield me is an insult. Can't I be trusted to face the truth but I must get it second-hand through you? A woman's place!
— E.M. Forster, A Room with a View
The point is not for women simply to take power out of men’s hands, since that wouldn’t change anything about the world. It’s a question precisely of destroying that notion of power.
— Simone de Beauvoir
Well, speaking as a feminist, I'm glad that women can lead--uh, groups of unspeakable magical evil.""Yes," Alan said gravely. "It'd be shoking if the evil magicians were sexist. For one thing, that would mean they were stupid, and having stupid enemies would be a terrible blow to my manly pride.
— Sarah Rees Brennan, The Demon's Covenant
Ya Ummi(my mother), I cannot live my life with a woman who has no key to my mind and does not share my concerns. She cannot - will not - read anything. She shrugs off the grave problems of the day and asks if I think her new tablecloth is pretty. We are living in difficult times and it is not enough for a person to be interested in his home and his job - in his own personal life. I need my partner to be someone to whom I can turn, confident of her sympathy, believing her when she tells me I'm in the wrong, strengthened when she tells me I'm in the right. I want to love, and be loved back - but what I see is not love or companionship but a sort of transacton of convenience santioned by religion and society and I do not want it.
— Ahdaf Soueif, The Map of Love
Simply put, feminism is a movement to end sexism, sexist exploitation, and oppression. This was a definition of feminism I offered in Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center more than 10 years ago. It was my hope at the time that it would become a common definition everyone would use. I liked this definition because it did not imply that men were the enemy. By naming sexism as the problem it went directly to the heart of the matter. Practically, it is a definition which implies that all sexist thinking and action is the problem, whether those who perpetuate it are female or male, child or adult. It is also broad enough to include an understanding of systemic institutionalized sexism. As a definition it is open-ended. To understand feminism it implies one has to necessarily understand sexism.
— bell hooks, Feminism is for Everybody: Passionate Politics
I realized that searching for a mentor has become the professional equivalent of waiting for Prince Charming. We all grew up on the fairy tale "Sleeping Beauty," which instructs young women that if they just wait for their prince to arrive, they will be kissed and whisked away on a white horse to live happily ever after. Now young women are told that if they can just find the right mentor, they will be pushed up the ladder and whisked away to the corner office to live happily ever after. Once again, we are teaching women to be too dependent on others.
— Sheryl Sandberg, Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead
You think you're being brave, you think you're being sexy, you think you're transcending feminism. But that's bullshit. - Susan Brownmiller
— Ariel Levy, Female Chauvinist Pigs: Women and the Rise of Raunch Culture
Wouldn't the worst be, isn't the worst, in truth, that women aren't castrated, that they have only to stop listening to the Sirens (for the Sirens were men) for history to change its meaning? You only have to look at the Medusa straight on to see her. And she's not deadly. She's beautiful and she's laughing.
— Hélène Cixous
I am done looking for love where it doesn’t exist. I am done coughing up dust in attempts to drink from dry wells.
— Maggie Georgiana Young
What Friedan gave to the world was, "the problem that has no name." She not only named it but dissected it. The advances of science, the development of labor-saving appliances, the development of the suburbs: all had come together to offer women in the 1950s a life their mothers had scarcely dreamed of, free from rampant disease, onerous drudgery, noxious city streets. But the green lawns and big corner lots were isolating, the housework seemed to expand to fill the time available, and polio and smallpox were replaced by depression and alcoholism. All that was covered up in a kitchen conspiracy of denial...[i]nstead the problem was with the mystique of waxed floors and perfectly applied lipstick.
— Betty Friedan, The Feminine Mystique
Because when there is true equality, resentment does not exist.
— Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Dear Ijeawele, or a Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions
Fame is fun, money is useful, celebrity can be exciting, but finally life is about optimal well-being and how we achieve that in dominator culture, in a greedy culture, in a culture that uses so much of the world’s resources. How do men and women, boys and girls, live lives of compassion, justice and love? And I think that’s the visionary challenge for feminism and all other progressive movements for social change.
— bell hooks
It is obvious that many women have appropriated feminism to serve their own ends, especially those white women who have been at the forefront of the movement; but rather than resigning myself to this appropriation I choose to re-appropriate the term “feminism,” to focus on the fact that to be “feminist” in any authentic sense of the term is to want for all people, female and male, liberation from sexist role patterns, domination, and oppression.
— bell hooks, Ain't I a Woman: Black Women and Feminism
There's nothing a man can do, that i can't do better and in heels
— Ginger Rogers
This is the underside of my world.Of course you don’t want me to be stupid, bless you! you only want to make sure you’re intelligent. You don’t want me to commit suicide; you only want me to be gratefully aware of my dependency. You don’t want me to despise myself; you only want the flattering deference to you that you consider a spontaneous tribute to your natural qualities. You don’t want me to lose my soul; you only want what everybody wants, things to go your way; you want a devoted helpmeet, a self-sacrificing mother, a hot chick, a darling daughter, women to look at, women to laugh at, women to come for comfort, women to wash your floors and buy your groceries and cook your food and keep your children out of your hair, to work when you need the money and stay home when you don’t, women to be enemies when you want a good fight, women who are sexy when you want a good lay, women who don’t complain, women who don’t nag or push, women who don’t hate you really, women who know their job and above all—women who lose. On top of it all, you sincerely require me to be happy; you are naively puzzled that I should be wretched and so full of venom in this the best of all possible worlds. Whatever can be the matter with me? But the mode is more than a little outworn.As my mother once said: the boys throw stones at the frogs in jest.But the frogs die in earnest.
— Joanna Russ, The Female Man
Society will not crumble if men take a turn at the dishes.
— Linda P. Rouse
Because the purpose of feminism isn’t to make a particular type of woman. The idea that there are inherently wrong and inherently right “types” of women is what’s screwed feminism for so long — this belief that “we” wouldn’t accept slaggy birds, dim birds, birds that bitch, birds that hire cleaners, birds that stay at home with their kids, birds that have pink Mini Metros with POWERED BY FAIRY DUST! bumper stickers, birds in burkas or birds that like to pretend, in their heads, that they’re married to Zach Braff from Scrubs and that you sometimes have sex in an ambulance while the rest of the cast watch and, latterly, clap. You know what? Feminism will have all of you.What is feminism? Simply the belief that women should be as free as men, however nuts, dim, deluded, badly dressed, fat, receding, lazy and smug they might be.Are you a feminist? Hahaha. Of course you are.
— Caitlin Moran, How to Be a Woman
I, too, overflow; my desires have invented new desires, my body knows unheard-of songs. Time and again I, too, have felt so full of luminous torrents that I could burst-burst with forms much more beautiful than those which are put up in frames and sold for a fortune. And I, too, said nothing, showed nothing; I didn't open my mouth, I didn't repaint my half of the world. I was ashamed. I was afraid, and I swallowed my shame and my fear. I said to myself: You are mad! What's the meaning of these waves, these floods, these outbursts? Where is the ebullient infinite woman who...hasn't been ashamed of her strength? Who, surprised and horrified by the fantastic tumult of her drives (for she was made to believe that a well-adjusted normal woman has a ...divine composure), hasn't accused herself of being a monster? Who, feeling a funny desire stirring inside her (to sing, to write, to dare to speak, in short, to bring out something new), hasn't thought that she was sick? Well, her shameful sickness is that she resists death, that she makes trouble.
— Hélène Cixous
blessed beshewho isbothfuriousand magnificent
— Taylor Rhodes, calloused: a field journal
We teach girls shame. Close your legs; cover yourself. We make them feel as though being born female, they're already guilty of something. And so, girls grow up to be women who silence themselves. They grow up to be women who cannot say what they truly think. And they grow up--and this is the worst thing we do to girls--they grow up to be women who have turned pretense into an art form.
— Chimamamda Ngozi Adichie
If the anti-abortion movement took a tenth of the energy they put into noisy theatrics and devoted it to improving the lives of children who have been born into lives of poverty, violence, and neglect, they could make a world shine.
— Michael Jay Tucker
Here she comes, running, out of prison and off the pedestal: chains off, crown off, halo off, just a live woman.
— Charlotte Perkins Gilman
I look at Kitty, who's braiding Chris's hair in microbraids. She's being extra quiet so we forget she's here and don't kick her out. 'I think that as long as you're ready and it's what you want to do and you're protecting yourself, then it's okay and you should do what you want to do.'Margot says, 'Society is far too caught up in shaming a woman for enjoying sex and applauding a man. I mean, all of the comments are about how Lara Jean is a slut, but nobody's saying anything about Peter, and he's right there with her. It's a ridiculous double standard.
— Jenny Han, P.S. I Still Love You
No longer will we (women) agree to protect the hearth at the price of extinguishing the fire within ourselves.
— Celia Gilbert
There is always a place where, if you listen closely in the night, you will hear a mother telling a story and at the end of the tale, she will ask you this question: 'Ou libéré?' Are you free, my daughter?"My grandmother quickly pressed her fingers over my lips.Now," she said, "you will know how to answer.
— Edwidge Danticat, Breath, Eyes, Memory
It is perhaps beside the point to remark that bowling alleys and supermarkets have nursery facilities, while schools and colleges and scientific laboratories and government offices do not.
— Betty Friedan, The Feminine Mystique
Human rights are women’s rights, and women’s rights are human rights. Let us not forget that among those rights are the right to speak freely — and the right to be heard.
— Hillary Rodham Clinton
Two of them have asked in the most circumspect and quiet ways possible if there was a chance that you prefer women.”I let out a sound that wasn’t quite a laugh. “Of course, because the only way I could possibly like men is if I bowed down at their feet?
— Kiera Cass, The Heir
The heart of a woman will never be found in the arms of a man.
— Vanessa Carlton
Of all creatures that can feel and think,we women are the worst treated things alive
— Euripides, Medea
Maybe my values are outdated, but I come from an old school of thought. I think that men ought to treat women like something other than just shorter, weaker men with breasts. Try and convict me if I’m a bad person for thinking so. I enjoy treating a woman like a lady, opening doors for her, paying for shared meals, giving flowers–all that sort of thing.
— Jim Butcher, Storm Front
I’m not beholden to the confirmation of your prejudices; to be perfectly frank, the prospect of confining the female characters in my story to placid, helpless secondary places in the narrative is so goddamn boring that I would rather not write at all.
— Scott Lynch
Some of the New York Radical Women shortly afterward formed WITCH (Women's International Terrorist Conspiracy from Hell) and its members, dressed as witches, appeared suddenly on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange. A leaflet put out by WITCH in New York said:WITCH lives and smiles in every woman. She is the free part of each of us, beneath the shy smiles, the acquiescence to absurd male domination, the make-up or flesh-suffocating clothes our sick society demands. There is no "joining" WITCH. If you are a woman and dare to look within yourself, you are a WITCH. You make your own rules.
— Howard Zinn, A People's History of the United States
Selene’s life is a lesson to us that the trajectory of women’s equality hasn’t always been a forward march. In some ways the ancients were more advanced than we are today
—  there have been setbacks before and may be more in the future.
Women who lead, read
— Laura Bates, Everyday Sexism
The feminists had destroyed the old image of woman, but they could not erase the hostility, the prejudice, the discrimination that still remained.
— Betty Friedan, The Feminine Mystique
If you are embarrassed about your sex, it must mean that you feel there is something demeaning or disgusting about being female. You are all wondrously made, girls. Remember that: wondrously made, and you should carry your sex proudly, a badge of honor.
— Phyllis Reynolds Naylor, All But Alice
I have no nostalgia for the patriarchy, please believe me. But what I have come to realize is that, when that patriarchic system was (rightfully) dismantled, it was not necessarily replaced by another form of protection. What I mean is--I never thought to ask a suitor the same challenging questions my father might have asked him, in a different age.
— Elizabeth Gilbert, Eat, Pray, Love
I get angry when women disavow feminism and shun the feminist label but say they support all the advances born of feminism because I see a disconnect that does not need to be there.
— Roxane Gay, Bad Feminist
I really think the range of emotions and perceptions I have had access to as a black person and as a female person are greater than those of people who are neither.... So it seems to me that my world did not shrink because I was a black female writer. It just got bigger.
— Toni Morrison
When my father is stern, no one chastises him. I don’t think it’s fair that when I act similarly, I’m seen as cruel. I’m making a huge decision, and I’m trying to be wise about it.
— Kiera Cass, The Heir