Get a feel for the popular feminism leader through these Gloria Steinem quotes.
The call for equality has long been a valiant and worthwhile effort. As with any effort, you need some people to be the leaders. You need some people to go that extra mile and to be an example for others. For Feminism, Gloria Steinem is one of those leaders.
Born in Toledo, OH in 1934, Gloria was a big force in the feminine movement in the 1960s and 1970s.
As a one-time columnist for New York Magazine and a co-founder of Ms. Magazine, Gloria carved out a profession that allowed her to be a voice for feminine issues and she has used that platform.
Don’t forget to also check out these feminism quotes about empowerment and equality for women.
Clever Gloria Steinem quotes
1. “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?” – Gloria Steinem
2. “Also, one of the simplest paths to deep change is for the less powerful to speak as much as they listen, and for the more powerful to listen as much as they speak.” – Gloria Steinem
3. “Men should think twice before making widowhood women’s only path to power.” – Gloria Steinem
4. “I have yet to hear a man ask for advice on how to combine marriage and a career.” – Gloria Steinem
5. “Far too many people are looking for the right person, instead of trying to be the right person.” – Gloria Steinem
6. “Decisions are best made by the people affected by them.” – Gloria Steinem
7. “I’m also now immune to politicians who say, “I’ve traveled the length and breadth of this great land, and I know…” I’ve traveled more than any of them, and I don’t know.” – Gloria Steinem
8. “Self-esteem isn’t everything; it’s just that there’s nothing without it.” – Gloria Steinem
9. “If the shoe doesn’t fit, must we change the foot?” – Gloria Steinem
Wise Gloria Steinem quotes
10. “A pedestal is as much a prison as any small, confined space.” – Gloria Steinem
11. “Rich People plan for three generations. Poor people plan for Saturday night.” – Gloria Steinem
12. “If you want people to listen to you, you have to listen to them. If you hope people will change how they live, you have to know how they live. If you want people to see you, you have to sit down with them eye-to-eye.” – Gloria Steinem
13. “The first problem for all of us, men and women, is not to learn but to unlearn.” – Gloria Steinem
14. “Once we give up searching for approval we often find it easier to earn respect.” – Gloria Steinem
15. “So whatever you want to do, just do it… Making a damn fool of yourself is absolutely essential.” – Gloria Steinem
16. “Without leaps of imagination or dreaming, we lose the excitement of possibilities. Dreaming, after all, is a form of planning.” – Gloria Steinem
17. “We need to remember across generations that there is as much to learn as there is to teach.” – Gloria Steinem
18. “Laughter is a rescue.” – Gloria Steinem
19. “I myself cried when I got angry, then became unable to explain why I was angry in the first place. Later I would discover this was endemic among female human beings. Anger is supposed to be “unfeminine” so we suppress it -until it overflows. I could see that not speaking up made my mother feel worse. This was my first hint of the truism that depression is anger turned inward; thus women are twice as likely to be depressed. My mother paid a high price for caring so much, yet being able to do so little about it. In this way, she led me toward an activist place where she herself could never go.” – Gloria Steinem
20. “America is an enormous frosted cupcake in the middle of millions of starving people.” – Gloria Steinem
21. “Dying seems less sad than having lived too little.” – Gloria Steinem
Gloria Steinem quotes about feminism
22. “A feminist is anyone who recognizes the equality and full humanity of women and men.” – Gloria Steinem
23. “We are becoming the men we wanted to marry.” – Gloria Steinem
24. “Women have two choices: Either she’s a feminist or a masochist.” – Gloria Steinem
25. “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.” – Gloria Steinem
26. “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.” – Gloria Steinem
27. “We are the women our parents warned us against, and we are proud.” – Gloria Steinem
28. “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… she will need her sisterhood.” – Gloria Steinem
29. “Racism and sexism are intertwined […] and cannot be uprooted separately.” – Gloria Steinem
30. “One day an army of gray-haired women may quietly take over the Earth!” – Gloria Steinem
31. “You should write about take no-shit women like me. Girls need to know they can break the rules.” – Gloria Steinem
32. “Don’t think about making women fit the world — think about making the world fit women.” – Gloria Steinem
33. “A lot of my generation are living out the un-lived lives of our mothers.” – Gloria Steinem
34. “Having someone who looks like us but thinks like them is worse than having no one at all.” – Gloria Steinem
Gloria Steinem quotes about writing
35. “Writing is the only thing that when I do it, I don’t feel I should be doing something else.” – Gloria Steinem
36. “I do not like to write – I like to have written.” – Gloria Steinem
37. “Wherever I go, bookstores are still the closest thing to a town square.” – Gloria Steinem
38. “As Robin Morgan wrote so wisely, “Hate generalizes, love specifies”. Thats what makes going on the road so important. It definitely specifies.” – Gloria Steinem
39. “I began to understand with a terrible sureness that we teach what we need to learn and write what we need to know.” – Gloria Steinem
More Gloria Steinem quotes
40. “The truth will set you free, but first it will piss you off.” – Gloria Steinem
41. “Empathy is the most radical of human emotions.” – Gloria Steinem
42. “Each others’ lives are our best textbooks.” – Gloria Steinem
43. “Needing approval is a female cultural disease, and often a sign of doing the wrong thing.” – Gloria Steinem
44. “I worshipped dead men for their strength, forgetting I was strong.” – Gloria Steinem
45. “Sometimes I think the only real division into two is between people who divide everything into two and those who don’t.” – Gloria Steinem
46. “We’ve begun to raise daughters more like sons… but few have the courage to raise our sons more like our daughters.” – Gloria Steinem
47. “Women may be the one group that grows more radical with age.” – Gloria Steinem
48. “Perhaps our need to escape into media is a misplaced desire for the journey.” – Gloria Steinem
49. “We are so different, yet so much the same.” – Gloria Steinem
50. “The art of life is not controlling what happens to us, but using what happens to us.” – Gloria Steinem
What did you learn from these Gloria Steinem quotes?
I hope the quotes above have given you a small peek into Gloria’s life and the impact she made for feminism.
I think that one of the most inspirational things about people being leaders and using their platform is that it encourages others to do the same.
Are there things that you have wanted to stand up for or make a difference in? When they write your story what will they say and how many people will you have impacted over your lifetime? If you are like Gloria Steinem then you will impact and make a big difference for others.
What’s your biggest takeaway from these Gloria Steinem quotes and sayings? Do you have any other favorite quotes to add? Let us know in the comment section below.
