Quotes About Empowerment

One of the saddest things I hear as I travel is "I don't know enough to be a feminist." Or even "I'm not smart enough to be a feminist." It breaks my heart.

We are linked, not ranked.

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

Not only had I never made any such complaints, but at political meetings, I had given my suggestions to whatever man was sitting next to me, knowing that if a man offered them, they would be taken more seriously. You white women, Mrs. Greene said kindly, as if reading my mind, if you don't stand up for yourselves, how can you stand up for anybody else?

No wonder studies show that women's intellectual self-esteem tends to go down with every year of higher education. We've been studying our own absence.

When people of color are in the majority instead of the minority, audiences are often the best education that white listeners can have.

Looking at international economic life brings to mind the ancient image of the world riding on the back of a turtle—only in reality, the turtle is a woman. She inches along, laboring just beneath the level of economic visibility, often blaming herself for not being able to bear more weight. Occasionally, she retreats into her shell, as if withdrawal were the only form of rebellion. But only when she upsets its balance will the world roll off her back.

for the less powerful to speak as much as they listen, and for the more powerful to listen as much as they speak.

one major way of ending the feminization of poverty is to attack the masculinization of wealth.

Many of these students have experienced the double discrimination of sex and race—not only in the mainstream but also by race in the women's movement, and by sex in the black power movement.

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.

Six years after that, I went to the White House with Wilma and watched as President Clinton and Hillary Clinton presented her with a Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian honor. As she stood there, strong, kind, and not at all intimidated by another chief of state, I was not the only one in the audience who thought, She could be president. I also thought, In a just country, she would be.

All my years of campaigning have given me one clear message: Voting isn't the most we can do, but it is the least. To

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

The personal is political. When

Since Native students often prosper in cooperative rather than competitive classrooms—as do a lot of female students, regardless of where they come from—I've been asked to talk about the feminist movement and efforts to change classrooms into learning circles.

Some of us are becoming the men we wanted to marry.

What Julia Ward Howe had in mind in 1870 when she invented Mother's Day for Peace was a day on which we oppose war and advance peace.

Let this message go forth from Houston and spread all over this land. There is a new force, a new understanding, a new sisterhood against all injustice that has been born here. We will not be divided and defeated again!"14

I remember with gratitude the banner carried by some very old and bawdy women who led the parade while I was a student: hardly a man is now alive, who remembers the girls of '95.)

to making revolution, not just dinner.

As King ended his speech, I heard Mahalia Jackson call out, "Tell them about the dream, Martin!" And he did begin the "I have a dream" litany from memory, with the crowd calling out to him after each image—Tell it! What would be most remembered had been least planned. I hoped Mrs. Greene heard a woman speak up—and make all the difference.

In Western mythology, she might be compared to Medusa, the serpent-haired Greek goddess whose name means Knowing Woman or Protectress. She once was all-powerful—until patriarchy came along in the form of a mythic young man who chopped off her head. He was told to do this by Athena, who sprang full-blown from the mind of her father, Zeus—a goddess thought up by patriarchy and therefore motherless. There is history in what is dismissed as prehistory In

We have become the men we wanted to marry.