It’s a facet of the gay rights movement that people don’t think about enough. Why suddenly marriage equality? Because it wasn’t until 1981 that the court struck down Louisiana’s ‚head and master rule,‘ that the husband was head and master of the house.

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 was a proponent of the ERA.

We do need women in civic life. We do need women to run for office, to be in political office. We need a feminist to be at the table when decisions are being made so that the right decisions will be made.

I love the women’s movement, and I never thought of it as belonging to any particular segment of the population.

All the reasonings of men are not worth one sentiment of women.

I’ve always felt heroic about my life… As a child, I remember little girls in the playground moaning about how boys could do more than they could. I didn’t think that was the case at all. My parents didn’t treat me as a girl.

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.

If we help an educated man’s daughter to go to Cambridge are we not forcing her to think not about education but about war? – not how she can learn, but how she can fight in order that she might win the same advantages as her brothers?

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.

Black men don’t like to be called ‚boys,‘ but women accept being called ‚girls.‘

Sabotage did not involve loss of life, and it offered the best hope for future race relations. Bitterness would be kept to a minimum and, if the policy bore fruit, democratic government could become a reality.

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.

Policy makers who have never served in the military continue to use the military to lead social change in this country.

I think same sex couples should be able to get married.

In the past, there was active discrimination against women in science. That has now gone, and although there are residual effects, these are not enough to account for the small numbers of women, particularly in mathematics and physics.

If you insist upon fighting to protect me, or ‚our‘ country, let it be understood soberly and rationally between us that you are fighting to gratify a sex instinct which I cannot share; to procure benefits where I have not shared and probably will not share.

I have always held firmly to the thought that each one of us can do a little to bring some portion of misery to an end.

The duty of youth is to challenge corruption.

In our society, the women who break down barriers are those who ignore limits.

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?‘

Aristotle could have avoided the mistake of thinking that women have fewer teeth than men, by the simple device of asking Mrs. Aristotle to keep her mouth open while he counted.

The question is not whether we will be extremists, but what kind of extremists we will be… The nation and the world are in dire need of creative extremists.

Chinese people themselves, they really want change.

Generally speaking, men are held in great esteem in all parts of the world, so why shouldn’t women have their share? Soldiers and war heroes are honored and commemorated, explorers are granted immortal fame, martyrs are revered, but how many people look upon women too as soldiers?

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.

My family has very strong women. My mother never laughed at my dream of Africa, even though everyone else did because we didn’t have any money, because Africa was the ‚dark continent‘, and because I was a girl.

There are thousands of ways to take action. For example, plant trees, pick up litter, join an organisation or movement that makes a difference and especially try to influence adults and put pressure on people in power.

Some say we should not engage in activism. Instead we should leave everything to our politicians and just vote for a change instead. But what do we do when there is no political will? What do we do when the politics needed are nowhere in sight?

For most of history, Anonymous was a woman.

I am for doing good to the poor, but I differ in opinion about the means. I think the best way of doing good to the poor is not making them easy in poverty, but leading or driving them out of it.

I wish I could say to all those people who consider themselves anarchists or radicals: Please join the nonviolent movement. This is how Gandhi freed India. If Gandhi freed India, we can certainly free the United States from our racism, misogyny, and bigotry.

One of the problems of organizing in the North, in the rich countries, is that people tend to think – even the activists – that instant gratification is required. You constantly hear: ‚Look I went to a demonstration, and we didn’t stop the war so what’s the use of doing it again?‘

And we have done more in the two and a half years that I’ve been in here than the previous 43 Presidents to uphold that principle, whether it’s ending ‚don’t ask, don’t tell,‘ making sure that gay and lesbian partners can visit each other in hospitals, making sure that federal benefits can be provided to same-sex couples.

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.

The reason why I am proud of my part in the punk movement is that I think it really did implant a message that was already there. The hippies told it to me, but punk made it something cool for people to stand up for, which is that we do not believe government, that we are against government.

Women, like men, should try to do the impossible. And when they fail, their failure should be a challenge to others.

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.

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.

Men’s vows are women’s traitors!

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

When a father puts in long hours at work, he’s praised for being dedicated and ambitious. But when a mother stays late at the office, she’s sometimes accused of being selfish, neglecting her kids.

Women have served all these centuries as looking glasses possessing the power of reflecting the figure of man at twice its natural size.

Civil disobedience’s main goal typically is to try to arouse and inspire others to join and do something. Well, sometimes that is a good tactic, sometimes not.

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.

Scientists are not delinquents. Our work has changed the conditions in which men live, but the use made of these changes is the problem of governments, not of scientists.

I’ve never had a dislike for men. I’ve been badly treated by some. But I’ve been loved greatly by some. I married a lot of them.

I think that gay marriage should be between a man and a woman.

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

No woman in my time will be prime minister or chancellor or foreign secretary – not the top jobs. Anyway, I wouldn’t want to be prime minister; you have to give yourself 100 percent.

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

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

I believe there is complete equality between men and women. And I believe those passages in the New Testament, not by Jesus, but by Paul, that say women should not adorn themselves, they should always wear hats or color their hair in church – things like that – I think they are signs of the times and should not apply to modern-day life.

Once made equal to man, woman becomes his superior.

A mother deserves a day off to care for a sick child or sick parent without running into hardship – and you know what, a father does, too. It’s time to do away with workplace policies that belong in a ‚Mad Men‘ episode.

I felt like, for so many years – and I still even feel it – as a girl, you can’t really expect to go on stage and dress like a boy and jump around and scream with the audience and mosh and stuff, and every time that happens, I feel really proud.

Behind every great man is a woman rolling her eyes.

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

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

Artists have a responsibility to speak and to act when governments fail, and if we don’t do that, we really deserve the world we get.

If you want something said, ask a man; if you want something done, ask a woman.