Common Feminist Quotes & Sayings

For what is done or learned by one class of women becomes, by virtue of their common womanhood, the property of all women. — Elizabeth Blackwell

Simply put, feminism is a movement to end sexism, sexist exploitation, and oppression. This was a definition of feminism I offered in Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center more than 10 years ago. It was my hope at the time that it would become a common definition everyone would use. I liked this definition because it did not imply that men were the enemy. By naming sexism as the problem it went directly to the heart of the matter. Practically, it is a definition which implies that all sexist thinking and action is the problem, whether those who perpetuate it are female or male, child or adult. It is also broad enough to include an understanding of systemic institutionalized sexism. As a definition it is open-ended. To understand feminism it implies one has to necessarily understand sexism. — Bell Hooks

A central tenet of modern feminist thought has been the assertion that "all women are oppressed." This assertion implies that women share a common lot, that factors like class, race, religion, sexual preference, etc. do not create a diversity of experience that determines the extent to which sexism will be an oppressive force in the lives of individual women. — Bell Hooks

I would never deny the importance of the media, but I wouldn't go out of the way to splash my pictures all over town. I'd rather let my work do the talking. — Amisha Patel

No body wishes more than I do to see such proofs as you exhibit, that nature has given to our black brethren, talents equal to those of the other colors of men, and that the appearance of a want of them is owing merely to the degraded condition of their existence, both in Africa & America. — Thomas Jefferson

But I felt it necessary to be part of the war effort and I enlisted in the Navy to be a flyer. — Paul Berg

At first, it seemed bizarre to find the progressive left making common cause with radical Islam. One half of the alliance professed to be pro-gay, pro-feminist, pro-whatever's-your-bag secularists; the other half were homophobic, misogynist, anti-any-groove-you-dig theocrats...it made no sense. But in fact what they had in common overrode their superficially more obvious incompatibilities, both the secular Big Government progressive and the political Islam recoiled from the concept of the citizen, of the free individual entrusted to operate within his own space, assume his responsibilities, and exploit his potential. — Mark Steyn

We are never present with, but always beyond ourselves; fear, desire, hope, still push us on toward the future. — Michel De Montaigne

I love that I am a woman with booby traps — Gillian Flynn

The wise man seeks little joys, knowing that life is long and that his quota of great joys is distinctly limited. — William Feather

My hand is clutching Sebastian's, although I'm not sure he's even aware of it after all we've been through. — Theresa Braun

It is a pity that ... the majority of feminists and their allies have stuck to the dead ground of "Me Decade" possessive individualism, an ideology that has more in common than it admits with the prehistoric right, which it claims to oppose but has in fact encouraged. — Christopher Hitchens

Addressing the economic plight of women may ultimately be the feminist platform that draws a collective response. It may well become the place of collective organizing, the common ground, the issue that unites all women. — Bell Hooks

God gives out good gifts of wisdom, talent, beauty, and skill 'graciously'
that is, in a completely unmerited way. He casts them across all humanity, regardless of religious conviction, race, gender, or any other attribute to enrich, brighten, and preserve the world. — Timothy Keller

I think of myself as a political idiot. Idiot, in ancient Greece, denoted a common person without access to knowledge and information--all women, by definition, and most men. I am unable to make judgments. I see no options I can identify with. Is that normal? — Jasmina Tesanovic