As we’ve seen time and again, women and girls who are out there working, they are truly force multipliers, spreading opportunity through their families and communities – and not just by creating programs and nonprofit organizations, not just by hiring other women, but also by serving as role models themselves.

We still think of a powerful man as a born leader and a powerful woman as an anomaly.

When I graduated from law school in 1959, there wasn’t a single woman on any federal bench. It wouldn’t be a realistic ambition for a woman to want to become a federal judge. It wasn’t realistic until Jimmy Carter became our president.

With every word we utter, with every action we take, we know our kids are watching us. We as parents are their most important role models.

We have to work harder to develop a profound theology of women within the church. The feminine genius is needed wherever we make important decisions.

I want to make a policy statement. I am unabashedly in favor of women.

I was raised by strong women, and that DNA is in my daughter and wife.

Man can never be a woman’s equal in the spirit of selfless service with which nature has endowed her.

Few women, I fear, have had such reason as I have to think the long sad years of youth were worth living for the sake of middle age.

Too often the great decisions are originated and given form in bodies made up wholly of men, or so completely dominated by them that whatever of special value women have to offer is shunted aside without expression.

I don’t want people saying, ‚Should we get a female director?‘ I want to hear, ‚Should we get a great director for this movie?‘

Women must pay for everything. They do get more glory than men for comparable feats, but, they also get more notoriety when they crash.

Feminism… I think the simplest explanation, and one that captures the idea, is a song that Marlo Thomas sang, ‚Free to be You and Me.‘

As you get older it is harder to have heroes, but it is sort of necessary.

Women are nothing but machines for producing children.

Our goal in the ’70s was to end the closed door era. There were so many things that were off limits to women: policing, firefighting, mining, piloting planes.

What we know is that when girls don’t go to school, they earn lower salaries. They get married earlier. They have higher infant and maternal mortality rates. And they’re more likely to contract HIV, less likely to immunize their children.

My decision to register women confirms what is already obvious throughout our society-that women are now providing all types of skills in every profession. The military should be no exception.

I think many people in my community had very different kinds of mothers: they had mothers who acquiesced in the system of male and white-supremacist domination, and my mother never did. She just could not do it. It just wasn’t in her.

Well I do think, when there are more women, that the tone of the conversation changes, and also the goals of the conversation change. But it doesn’t mean that the whole world would be a lot better if it were totally run by women. If you think that, you’ve forgotten high school.

I don’t mind living in a man’s world as long as I can be a woman in it.

I think women want to take care of themselves, and I think having a voice in how that is done is very important.

And when a woman’s will is as strong as the man’s who wants to govern her, half her strength must be concealment.

The stronger the participation of the female characters, the better the movie. They knew that in the old days, when women stars were equally as important as men.

The basic Buddhist stand on the question of equality between the genders is age-old. At the highest tantric levels, at the highest esoteric level, you must respect women: every woman.

I’m always rather nervous about how you talk about women who are active in politics, whether they want to be talked about as women or as politicians.

It doesn’t matter how long my hair is or what colour my skin is or whether I’m a woman or a man.

The women of my generation and my daughter’s generation, they were very active in moving along the social change that would result in equal citizenship stature for men and women.

Clever and attractive women do not want to vote; they are willing to let men govern as long as they govern men.

Even before I went to the UN, I often would want to say something in a meeting – only woman at the table – and I’d think, ‚OK well, I don’t think I’ll say that. It may sound stupid.‘ And then some man says it, and everybody thinks it’s completely brilliant, and you are so mad at yourself for not saying something.

I’m trying to show everybody that I’m a girl, and I’m five foot four, and you can do anything you want, no matter your gender. It’s your world, too!

When I was growing up, there were no women in orchestras. Auditioners thought they could tell the difference between a woman playing and a man. Some intelligent person devised a simple solution: Drop a curtain between the auditioners and the people trying out. And, lo and behold, women began to get jobs in symphony orchestras.

My mother never cursed at home; my father never cursed at home. My father didn’t drink. Even though we were poor, we would say a blessing over the table. So that’s who I am.

Being the boss anywhere is lonely. Being a female boss in a world of mostly men is especially so.

The expression a woman wears on her face is far more important than the clothes she wears on her back.

I’ve never thought about any kind of prejudice about women in country music because I never felt like it affected me. I was fortunate enough to come about in a time when I didn’t feel that kind of energy at all, and it was always my theory that if you want to play in the same ballgame as the boys, you’ve got to work as hard as them.

I’ve never been a feminist.

As a woman I have no country. As a woman my country is the whole world.

A gender line… helps to keep women not on a pedestal, but in a cage.

In the duel of sex woman fights from a dreadnought and man from an open raft.

Girls shouldn’t worry about being the equal of men in the business world.

Children have never been very good at listening to their elders, but they have never failed to imitate them.

I always say that women should wear whatever makes them feel good about themselves. That’s what I always try to do.

Whether women are better than men I cannot say – but I can say they are certainly no worse.

I remember being in Japan when Destiny’s Child put out ‚Independent Women,‘ and women there were saying how proud they were to have their own jobs, their own independent thinking, their own goals. It made me feel so good, and I realized that one of my responsibilities was to inspire women in a deeper way.

When I get up and work out, I’m working out just as much for my girls as I am for me, because I want them to see a mother who loves them dearly, who invests in them, but who also invests in herself. It’s just as much about letting them know as young women that it is okay to put yourself a little higher on your priority list.

The woman who is known only through a man is known wrong.

Neither sex, without some fertilization of the complimentary characters of the other, is capable of the highest reaches of human endeavor.

I’m not particularly a feminist, but if you get women off the animal cycle of reproduction and give them some say in how many children they’ll have, immediately the floor will rise.

Nothing can be more absurd than the practice that prevails in our country of men and women not following the same pursuits with all their strengths and with one mind, for thus, the state instead of being whole is reduced to half.

Women will only have true equality when men share with them the responsibility of bringing up the next generation.

I have to tell you, my seven-year-old granddaughter said to my daughter, her mother, ‚So what’s the big deal about Grandma Maddy having been Secretary of State? Only girls are Secretaries of State.‘ Most of her lifetime, it’s true. But at the time it really was a big deal.

Children are educated by what the grown-up is and not by his talk.

I have worshipped woman as the living embodiment of the spirit of service and sacrifice.

We as women, we have to understand that we know more, just even instinctively, than we think we do.

Nature has given women so much power that the law has very wisely given them little.

I never realized until lately that women were supposed to be the inferior sex.

Women have to be extremely careful about choosing something that they consider an act of defiance that can really be used to further their enslavement.

By improving health, empowering women, population growth comes down.

The concern was that if a woman was doing gender equality, her chances of making it to tenure in the law school were diminished. It was considered frivolous.

It’s an endless proving of myself, that I really am a musician, that I have something to offer in the room. That women can be musicians, women can be rock stars, women can be more than an objectified idea of a pop star.