Quotes About Empowerment

Women are not allowed truth, not allowed speaking roles, not allowed to be precise.

I can't accept an identity others give me; I won't be your person.

As mulheres têm um incrível acesso à força e à sabedoria naturais se deuxadas por conta própria.

We are taught to think ourselves ugly. Eyes are an assaulted sense. We are taught to behave by spankings and whippings. Touch is an assaulted sense. We are taught we should not smell, or we smell wrong. Smell is an assaulted sense. We listen to songs that call us 'hos and tell us how to give blow jobs. Hearing is an assaulted sense. Taste, not so much.

In Detroit we understand the phrase "Affirmative Action" a little different than they do in the rest of the world. In Detroit it means: Take a step, don't step back, don't talk, don't wait—act! Knock your brother upside his head and drag him through the water, but save his life. Affirmative action is a lifesaving dance.

The single most impressive fact about the attempt by American women to obtain the right to vote is how long it took.

No one can pull anyone back from anywhere. You save yourself or you remain unsaved.

I had surprised myself this year by jumping in to reshape my life before life stepped in to reshape it for me.

What I took it to mean was: women would be better off when they no longer needed men more than they needed their own independent identities.

And for an insane moment she thought, this is no different from normality, just women existing and surviving, this is what happens to women who don't fit into a world created by men.

fBy living up to their calling, women will succeed in guaranteeing a proper recognition of the unique value of femininity and its crucial mission in the world.

Fiction is such a world of freedom, it's wonderful. If you want someone to fly, they can fly.

It's so clear that you have to cherish everyone. I think that's what I get from these older black women, that every soul is to be cherished, that every flower Is to bloom.

My mother was very strong. Once, she picked up a coconut and smashed it against my father's head. It taught me about women defending themselves and not collapsing in a heap.

I just like to have words that describe things correctly. Now to me, 'black feminist' does not do that. I need a word that is organic, that really comes out of the culture, that really expresses the spirit that we see in black women. And it's just... womanish.

Don't wait around for other people to be happy for you. Any happiness you get you've got to make yourself.

Nobody's as powerful as we make them out to be.

I'm not convinced that women have the education or the sense of their own history enough or that they understand the cruelty of which men are capable and the delight that many men will take in seeing you choose to chain yourself - then they get to say 'See, you did it yourself.'

Our mothers and grandmothers have, more often than not anonymously, handed on the creative spark, the seed of the flower they themselves never hoped to see.

The trouble with our people is as soon as they got out of slavery they didn't want to give the white man nothing else. But the fact is, you got to give em something. Either your money, your land, your woman or your ass.

I'm for women choosing whatever they want to do but they have to really know what they are doing.

In my work and in myself I reflect black people, women and men, as I reflect others. One day even the most self-protective ones will look into the mirror I provide and not be afraid.

Hard times require furious dancing. Each of us is proof.

The animals of the world exist for their own reasons. They were not made for humans any more than black people were made for white, or women created for men.