100 Quotes by Gloria Steinem
Gloria Steinem, an American feminist, journalist, and social political activist, is a prominent figure in the fight for women's rights and gender equality. Her work as a writer and speaker has been instrumental in advancing discussions about reproductive rights, workplace equity, and women's empowerment. Steinem co-founded Ms. magazine, which became a platform for feminist voices and issues, and she was a key organizer of the Women's March on Washington in 2017. Her ability to articulate complex ideas in accessible language and her commitment to intersectional feminism have helped bridge divides and engage diverse audiences. Steinem's legacy is marked by her tireless advocacy for gender equality and social justice, inspiring generations to challenge the status quo and work towards a more inclusive world.
Gloria Steinem Quotes
Self-esteem isn't everything; it's just that there's nothing without it. (Meaning)
A woman without a man is like a fish without a bicycle. (Quote Meaning)
God may be in the details, but the goddess is in the questions. (Meaning)
Hope is a very unruly emotion. (Quote Meaning)
Empathy is the most radical of human emotions. (Meaning)
Most women are one man away from welfare. (Quote Meaning)
The future depends entirely on what each of us does every day. (Meaning)
We need to remember across generations that there is as much to learn as there is to teach. (Quote Meaning)
Any woman who chooses to behave like a full human being should be warned that the armies of the status quo will treat her as something of a dirty joke. (Meaning)
When unique voices are united in a common cause, they make history. (Quote Meaning)
Far too many people are looking for the right person, instead of trying to be the right person. (Meaning)
Once we give up searching for approval we often find it easier to earn respect. (Quote Meaning)
The first problem for all of us, men and women, is not to learn, but to unlearn. (Meaning)
Power can be taken, but not given. The process of the taking is empowerment in itself. (Quote Meaning)
Law and justice are not always the same. When they aren't, destroying the law may be the first step toward changing it. (Meaning)
The authority of any governing institution must stop at its citizen's skin. (Quote Meaning)
Without leaps of imagination, or dreaming, we lose the excitement of possibilities. Dreaming, after all, is a form of planning. (Meaning)
The art of life is not controlling what happens to us, but using what happens to us (Quote Meaning)
Whatever you want to do,do it now. (Meaning)
Some of us are becoming the men we wanted to marry. (Quote Meaning)
A feminist is anyone who recognizes the equality and full humanity of women and men. (Meaning)
If the shoe doesn't fit, must we change the foot? (Quote Meaning)
If you really want to be lonely, get married. (Meaning)
Logic is in the eye of the logician. (Quote Meaning)
I do not like to write - I like to have written. (Meaning)
The surest way to be alone is to get married. (Quote Meaning)
we are the women our parents warned us against, and we are proud (Meaning)
We teach what we need to learn. (Quote Meaning)
It's never to late for a happy childhood. (Meaning)
Without leaps of imagination, or dreaming, we lose the excitement of possibilities. Dreaming, after all, is a form of planning.
Far too many people are looking for the right person, instead of trying to be the right person.
We've begun to raise daughters more like sons... but few have the courage to raise our sons more like our daughters.
If women are supposed to be less rational and more emotional at the beginning of our menstrual cycle when the female hormone is at its lowest level, then why isn't it logical to say that, in those few days, women behave the most like the way men behave all month long?
Law and justice are not always the same. When they aren't, destroying the law may be the first step toward changing it.
How ever 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, religion or all four.
The purpose of feminism is to free the uniqueness of the individual and to understand that inside each of us is a unique human being who is a combination of heredity and environment.
No man can call himself liberal, or radical, or even a conservative advocate of fair play, if his work depends in any way on the unpaid or underpaid labor of women at home, or in the office.
A pedestal is as much a prison as any small, confined space.
A woman without a man is like a fish without a bicycle.
By the year 2000 we will, I hope, raise our children to believe in human potential, not God.
The art of life is not controlling what happens to us, but using what happens to us
Any woman who chooses to behave like a full human being should be warned that the armies of the status quo will treat her as something of a dirty joke. That's their natural and first weapon. She will need her sisterhood.
I have me brave women who are exploring the outer edge of human possibility, with no history to guide them, and with a courage to make themselves vulnerable that I find moving beyond words.
Some of us are becoming the men we wanted to marry.
Clinging to the past is the problem. Embracing change is the answer.
Dreaming, after all, is a form of planning.
A feminist is anyone who recognizes the equality and full humanity of women and men.
One day an army of gray-haired women may quietly take over the Earth!
The first problem for all of us, men and women, is not to learn, but to unlearn.
A liberated woman is one who has sex before marriage and a job after.
The future depends entirely on what each of us does every day; a movement is only people moving.
No one can give us power. If we aren’t part of the process of taking it, we won’t be strong enough to use it.
The origins of violence against women by men are not biological. If that were the case, it would exist in every culture. And it doesn't exist in every culture.
when pain has been intertwined with love and closeness, it's very difficult to believe that love and closeness can be experienced without pain.
Law and justice are not always the same.
The story of women's struggle for equality belongs to no single feminist nor to any one organization but to the collective efforts of all who care about human rights
We need to stop raising boys to think that they need to prove their masculinity by being controlling or by not showing emotion or by not being little girls.
Whenever one person stands up and says, “Wait a minute, this is wrong,” it helps other people do the same.
Hope is a very unruly emotion.
Patriarchy requires violence or the subliminal threat of violence in order to maintain itself... The most dangerous situation for a woman is not an unknown man in the street, or even the enemy in wartime, but a husband or lover in the isolation of their home.
If you add up all the forms of genocide, from female infanticide and genital mutilation to so-called honor crimes, sex trafficking, and domestic abuse, everything, we lose about 6 million humans every year just because they were born female. That's a holocaust every year.
Women can be vivacious. We are allowed more varieties of facial expression and gestures. Men must be rocklike.
If the shoe doesn't fit, must we change the foot?
If what's inside your dreams wasn't already real inside you, you couldn't even dream it.
Power can be taken, but not given. The process of the taking is empowerment in itself.
I have yet to hear a man ask for advice on how to combine marriage and a career.
I've yet to be on a campus where most women weren't worrying about some aspect of combining marriage, children, and a career. I've yet to find one where many men were worrying about the same thing.
In order to make a choice, you need the power to see there is one.
Empathy is the most radical of human emotions.
But somewhere within each of us, buried at varying depths depending on the age and degree of neglect or abuse, shame or coercion we endured, there is a resistant, daydreaming, rebellious, creative, unique child -- a true self who is waiting.
I want to say to you that there is life and dreams and surprises after 30-and 40, and 50, and 60, and 77! Believe me, life is one long surprise.
Like art, revolutions come from combining what exists into what has never existed before.
Women may be the one group that grows more radical with age.
Helping begins with listening.
Being married is like having somebody permanently in your corner. It feels limitless, not limited.
If you say, I'm for equal pay, that's a reform. But if you say. I'm a feminist, that's a transformation of society.
We need to remember across generations that there is as much to learn as there is to teach.
Women have two choices: Either she's a feminist or a masochist.
Probably those three things affect the most people: reproductive freedom, freedom from violence, and democratic families. But there may well be someone sitting at this table who has a great idea to do something else that wouldn't come under those umbrellas and that would really be great, and make all kinds of change.
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 on which this system still depends.
A good friendship is a conversation that never ends.
You are the leader you've been waiting for.
Rich People plan for three generations Poor people plan for Saturday night
I think one of the great innovations of sexual harassment law was that it did not use the word "consent." It used the word "welcome."
Behave like everything you do matters.
The authority of any governing institution must stop at its citizen's skin.
Once we give up searching for approval we often find it easier to earn respect.
I believe a unique core self is born into every human being; the result of millennia of environment and heredity combined in an unpredictable way that could never happen before or again.
No wonder male religious leaders so often say that humans were born in sin—because we were born to female creatures. Only by obeying the rules of the patriarchy can we be reborn through men. No wonder priests and ministers in skirts sprinkle imitation birth fluid over our heads, give us new names, and promise rebirth into everlasting life.
There are many ways of supporting gender equality, from something as simple as paid sick leave and flexible work hours to attributing an economic value to all care-giving, and making that amount tax deductible.
Whatever you want to do, do it now.
Because when some people are invisible, everyone suffers.
Women are not going to be equal outside the home until men are equal in it.
Writing keeps me from believing everything I read.
What would happen if even one generation were raised with respect and without violence?
I want us to organize, to tell the personal stories that create empathy, which is the most revolutionary emotion.
The art of being helpful is behaving as if everything we do matters - because we never know which things might.
Most American children suffer too much mother and too little father.
Women fear endangering men's approval so much, we don't even wait for them to say no. Or else we protect them, even if it means saying no to ourselves.
We can tell our values by looking at our checkbook stubs.
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.
Women tend to be conservative in youth and get more radical as they get older because they lose power with age. So, if a young woman is not a feminist, I say, just wait.
So whatever you want to do, just do it... Making a damn fool of yourself is absolutely essential.
There's a wonderful cartoon of Reagan in a Western hat and he's saying, "A pregnant woman in every home, a gun in every holster. Make America a man again." That sums up his attitudes: pro-military, anti-equality, pro-rich, anti-poor.
In every century, there are a handful of writers who help the human race to evolve. Andrea is one of them.
A movement is only composed of people moving. To feel its warmth and motion around us is the end as well as the means.
It is more rewarding to watch money change the world than watch it accumulate.
Feminism starts out being very simple, and it ends up being a world view that questions hierarchy altogether.
We're changing ourselves to fit the world instead of changing the world to fit women.
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
Men, through no fault of theirs, get born into cultures that tell them that if a woman can do it, it's not worth doing, or if they're not superior to women in one way or another, they're not really masculine.
Inner space is the real frontier.
We choose to be writers because we don't want to talk.
I wouldn't want to generalize, but we still do live in a society that's sexist and racist and addicted to class and has the ridiculous idea that if you have money you're smarter, which Donald Trump by himself should be able to disprove.
What would happen if we listened to children as much as we talked to them?
Marriage works best for men than women. The two happiest groups are married men and unmarried women.
Women have always been an equal part of the past. We just have not been a part of history.
There are two types of people in the world, those who say 'there are two types of people in the world' and those who don't.
I think that we need to change the culture, not blame the people that are playing the only game that exists.
The voting booth is the only place that a pauper equals a billionaire, and any woman equals any man.
Life after 50 or 60 is itself another country, as different as adolescence is from childhood, or as adulthood is from adolescence - and just as adventurous.
The Golden Rule works for men as written, but for women it should go the other way around. We need to do unto ourselves as we do unto others.
At my graduation, I thought we had to marry what we wished to become. Now you are becoming the men you once would have wished to marry.
When unique voices are united in a common cause, they make history.
It's the biggest economic influence in a woman's life whether she can decide when and whether to have children or not.
If you can learn to like how you look, and not the way you think you look, it can set you free.
Battered women is a phrase that uncovered major, long-hidden violence. It helps us to face the fact that, statistically speaking, the most dangerous place for a woman is in her own home, not in the streets.
Intelligence without character is a dangerous thing.
We need to raise our sons more like our daughters. We need to relieve them of this burden of the idea that to be masculine they have to be superior, which is what they get addicted to, and why both racism and sexism are crimes that I call superiority crimes.
If we keep on talking about masculine and feminine and following those stereotypes, then we will make women suppress and despise their so called masculine qualities and men suppress and despise their so called feminine ones, and that's where all the trouble starts.
learning must travel the distance from head to heart.
imagining anything is the first step toward creating it. Believing in a true self is what allows a true self to be born.
Language can't solve everything, of course, but it does carry our dreams and our ideas.
Housewives are dependent creatures who are still children…parasites.
If men menstruated, they would brag about how much and for how long.
The cleanup costs of polluting a river, injecting pesticides into the ground water, or putting noxious gases into the air have not been figured into the cost of the manufacturing or agribusiness that put them there in the first place. Historically, the economic incentive has been to pollute.
When the past dies, there is mourning, but when the future dies our imaginations are compelled to carry it on.
The power of the state stops at our skins. They can't restrict contraception [or] abortion. They can't take our kidneys. Bodily integrity is a principle.
anything being perceived as being superior takes the noun. And everything that isn't, that's judged to be inferior, requires an adjective. So there are black novelists and novelists. There are women physicians and physicians. Male nurses and nurses.
More women are becoming the men they wanted to marry, but too few men are becoming the women they wanted to marry. That leaves most women with two jobs, one outside the home and one in it.
There is always one true inner voice. Trust it.
Self-hatred leads to the need either to dominate or to be dominated.
It's not that women are less corruptible than men are, it's that women have had less chance to become corrupt.
If we're by ourselves we come to feel crazy and alone. We need to make alternate families of small groups of women who support each other, talk to each other regularly, can speak their truths and their experiences and find they're not alone in them, that other women have them, too ... It makes such a huge difference.
There is a naive belief that injustice only had to be pointed out in order to be cured.
If you have two groups of people and you say one is inferior to the other, which is a lie, then the only way to maintain the lie is through violence or the threat of violence.
Having someone who looks like us but thinks like them is worse than having no one at all.
Oppression has no logic--just a self-fulfilling prophecy, justified by a self-perpetuating system.
Whatever a 'superior' group has will be used to justify its superiority, and whatever an 'inferior' group has will be used to justify its plight. Black men were given poorly paid jobs because they were said to be 'stronger' than white men, while all women were relegated to poorly paid jobs because they were said to be 'weaker.
The U.S. has more guns per capita and supplies more guns to the world than any other country. What would be a fistfight without guns turns into dead bodies with them. Families with guns in the house are more likely to shoot themselves accidentally than to shoot any intruder. Women abused by their partners have a five-fold increased risk of being killed when their partner owns a gun. Every three hours, at least one child is wounded or killed by gunfire.
We've learned that women can and should do 'men's jobs,' for instance, and we've won the principle (if not the fact) of getting equal pay. But we haven't yet established the principle (much less the fact) that men can and should do 'women's jobs': that homemaking and child-rearing are as much a man's responsibility, too, and that those jobs in which women are concentrated outside the home would probably be better paid if more men became secretaries, file clerks, and nurses, too.
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.
Sexism is not inevitable. It's only about controlling reproduction and therefore controlling women.
Voting isn't the most we can do. But it is the least.
Each others' lives are our best textbooks.
If you really want to be lonely, get married.
Intelligence in the service of poor instinct is really dangerous.
Men tend to gain wholeness by acquiring the qualities that are wrongly called feminine.
There's no emotion more revolutionary than empathy.
So why is the sex barrier not taken as seriously as the racial one?
A lot of my generation are living out the un-lived lives of our mothers.
I don't like writing. I like having written.
Women must have seats at the table because peace is too crucial to be left only to the politicians or only to the male half of our world.
It's going to take a while because for the last 500 years patriarchal societies have been devoted to controlling reproduction and that means controlling women. So we got into this masculine/feminine, dominant/passive paradigm, and it's going to take a while to get out.
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.
I think of the future in two ways - survival plus moving forward. Under survival, I would put all the efforts to save the female half of the world from violence directed at us specifically because we are female.
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.
Allowing women the power to decide when and whether to have children is the only way to solve the 7 billion human load on this planet that threatens to destroy it. Women's equality is also men's survival.
Every social justice movement that I know of has come out of people sitting in small groups, telling their life stories, and discovering that other people have shared similar experiences.
There is bias and sexism everywhere, just like there are problems of racism and homophobia stemming from the whole notion that we're arranged in a hierarchy, that we're ranked rather than linked.
― Gloria Steinem Quotes
Chief Editor
Tal Gur is an author, founder, and impact-driven entrepreneur at heart. After trading his daily grind for a life of his own daring design, he spent a decade pursuing 100 major life goals around the globe. His journey and most recent book, The Art of Fully Living, has led him to found Elevate Society.
