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When women take their education and their abilities seriously and put them to use, ultimately they have to compete with men. It is better for a woman to compete impersonally in society, as men do, than to compete for dominance in her own home with her husband, compete with her neighbors for empty status, and so smother her son that he cannot compete at all.

— Betty Friedan The Feminine Mystique (1963)

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More quotes by Betty Friedan

The problem lay buried, unspoken for many years in the minds of American women.

The Feminine Mystique (1963)

The feminine mystique has succeeded in burying millions of American women alive.

The Feminine Mystique (1963)

It is easier to live through someone else than to become complete yourself.

The Feminine Mystique (1963)

A girl should not expect special privileges because of her sex but neither should she 'adjust' to prejudice and discrimination.

The Feminine Mystique (1963)

Men weren’t really the enemy — they were fellow victims suffering from an outmoded masculine mystique that made them feel unnecessarily inadequate when there were no bears to kill.

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Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Betty Friedan (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.