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Gloria Steinem Quotes
1934–2026 United States
Gloria Marie Steinem (March 25, 1934 - September 2, 2026) was 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 founded many organizations and projects and was the recipient of many awards and honors.
United States Activists Authors Columnists Feminists Also known as: Gloria Marie Steinem, Steinem, Gloria
Random Gloria Steinem quote
54 quotes
Nobody tries to diminish the Civil Rights movement by saying they were middle class.
The Humanist interview (2012)
I think we all have the power to name ourselves. I try to call people what it is they wish to be called.
The Humanist interview (2012)
[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.
I always wanted to put a sign up on the road to Yale saying, 'Beware: Deconstruction Ahead'. Academics are forced to write in language no one can understand so that they get tenure. They have to say 'discourse', not 'talk'. Knowledge that is not accessible is not helpful. It becomes aerialised—and I think it's important that women's experiences be given a narrative.
I like to say that the last five-to-ten thousand years has been an experiment that failed and it’s now time to declare the first meeting of the post-patriarchal, post-racist, post-nationalist age. So let’s add “post-theological.” Why not?
The Humanist interview (2012)
There were never that many women stand-up comics in the past because the power to make people laugh is also a power that gets people upset.
The Humanist interview (2012)
In later years, if I'm remembered at all it will be for inventing a phrase like 'reproductive freedom' ... as a phrase it includes the freedom to have children or not to. So it makes it possible for us to make a coalition.
First, it's important to note that rape and war didn't always go together. For instance, European colonists wrote astonished letters home about how "even these savages" -- by which they meant the residents of this continent they were invading -- didn't rape, not even their women prisoners. But those were wars of self-defense.
Look, you didn’t leave your party. The party left you.
The Humanist interview (2012)
You can compel love, actually, if somebody is isolated and dependent — it’s like the Stockholm syndrome. But you can’t compel laughter. It happens when two things come together and make a third unexpectedly.
The Humanist interview (2012)
She pulls in at the airport, beating a limousine to the last open space, then lifts my bag filled with books out of the trunk as if it were a feather. "You should write about take-no-shit women like me. Girls need to know they can break the rules. If the nuns had told me that, I could have saved twenty years."
My Life on The Road (2015)
These patriarchal controls limit men's sexuality too ... That's why men are asked symbolically to submit the sexual part of themselves and their sons to patriarchal authority, which seems to be the origin of male circumcision, a practice that, even as advocates admit, is medically unnecessary 90% of the time. Speaking for myself, I stand with many brothers in eliminating that practice too.
A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle.
Misattributed
Housewives are dependent creatures who are still children... parasites.
Misattributed
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