Women's Movements Quotes
They Said It
| "If we have no right act, then may we well be termed 'the white slaves of the North,' for like our brethren in bonds, we must seal our lips in silence and despair." - Angelina Grimké defending the right of women to speak and act in opposition to slavery, 183762 |
| "I never doubted that equal rights was the right direction. Most reforms, most problems are complicated. But to me there is nothing complicated about ordinary equality." - Alice Paul, 197263 |
| "Kaiser Wilson Have you forgotten your sympathy with the poor Germans because they were not self-governed? 20,000,000 American women are not self-governed. Take the beam out of your own eye." - Silent Sentinel banner, 191764 |
| "Each suburban wife struggled with it alone. As she made the beds, shopped for groceries, matched slipcover material, ate peanut butter sandwiches with her children, chauffeured Cub Scouts and Brownies, lay beside her husband at night—she was afraid to ask even of herself the silent question—'Is this all?'" - Betty Friedan, 196365 |
| "It is sobering to realize that the ERA was defeated not by Barry Goldwater, Jerry Falwell, or any combination of male chauvinist pigs, but by women who were alienated by a feminist movement the values of which seemed elitist and disconnected from the lives of ordinary women." - Sylvia Ann Hewlett66 |
| "Women libbers view the home as a prison and the wife and mother as a slave. [...] The women libbers don't understand that most women want to be a wife, mother, and homemaker—and are happy in that role." - Phyllis Schlafly, 197267 |
| "I just don't see why some people don't hit Phyllis Schlafly in the mouth." - Feminist attorney and author Florence Kennedy, 197468 |