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.

This is a wonderful planet, and it is being completely destroyed by people who have too much money and power and no empathy.

Anyone who knows anything of history knows that great social changes are impossible without feminine upheaval. Social progress can be measured exactly by the social position of the fair sex, the ugly ones included.

Now we’re in the midst of not just advocating for change, not just calling for change – we’re doing the grinding, sometimes frustrating work of delivering change – inch by inch, day by day.

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.

I have said this many times, that there seems to be enough room in the world for mediocre men, but not for mediocre women, and we really have to work very, very hard.

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

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

I think the whole stigma of ‚black movies‘ is slowly being lost. When you look at movies like ’12 Years A Slave,‘ to ‚The Butler,‘ to ‚The Best Man,‘ to ‚Ride Along,‘ to even ‚Think Like a Man‘ from last year – these movies are just good movies.

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

No one will ever win the battle of the sexes; there’s too much fraternizing with the enemy.

We are trying to construct a more inclusive society. We are going to make a country in which no one is left out.

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.

I am worrying about my country. I feel I have a responsibility as a novelist to do something.

America is the student who defies the odds to become the first in a family to go to college – the citizen who defies the cynics and goes out there and votes – the young person who comes out of the shadows to demand the right to dream. That’s what America is about.

Living in America and, of course, just being women in general, we’ve got more strength than we think we do.

All women have a perception much more developed than men. So all women somehow, being repressed for so many millennia, they ended up by developing this sixth sense and contemplation and love. And this is something that we have a hard time to accept as part of our society.

In the public eye, girls and women with strong perspectives are hated. If you’re a girl with an opinion, people just hate you. There are still people who are afraid of successful women, and that’s so lame.

It is not women’s liberation, it is women’s and men’s liberation.

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.

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.

I have all the admiration in the world for somebody like Bono, who really puts himself on the line and tries actively to do something about our world situation.

My own feeling is that one should refuse to participate in any activity that implements American aggression – thus tax refusal, draft refusal, avoidance of work that can be used by the agencies of militarism and repression, all seem to me essential.

I want to support other women because of the opportunities I’ve had – and I’ve had a lot of opportunities. What I try as a female director is to do the best job I can and, in the meantime, bring attention to as many other female directors and writers as I can.

All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent.

We have to understand what the older generation has dealt to us, what mess they have created that we have to clean up and live with.

The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.

If you can make a girl laugh, you can make her do anything.

Aviation, this young modern giant, exemplifies the possible relationship of women and the creations of science. Although women have not taken full advantage of its use and benefits, air travel is as available to them as to men.

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.

We are going to have peace even if we have to fight for it.

If I were a woman, I’d simply refuse to speak to any man or do anything for men until I’d got the vote.

There are a number of women who have brought about immense change in society.

It’s always going to be a fight for anyone who isn’t an older white man. I want to fight for anyone who doesn’t have a fight.

I am involved in a freedom ride protesting the loss of the minority rights belonging to the few remaining earthbound stars. All we demanded was our right to twinkle.

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

When I look back on what I did for the Left, I’m in a small way quite proud of some of it – I only wish I’d done more.

What I’m asking for is hard. It’s easier to be cynical; to accept that change isn’t possible, and politics is hopeless, and to believe that our voices and actions don’t matter. But if we give up now, then we forsake a better future.

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

If I were a Negro, I’d be fighting, as Martin Luther King fought, for human recognition and justice. I’d rather go down with my flag flying. If you’re weak or crippled, or you can’t speak out or fight back in some way, then people don’t hesitate to treat you badly.

For way too long the politicians and people in power have got away with not doing anything at all to fight the climate crisis and ecological crisis.

The battle for women’s rights has been largely won.

Fight for the things that you care about, but do it in a way that will lead others to join you.

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.

Woman was God’s second mistake.

Once made equal to man, woman becomes his superior.

To be a Negro in this country and to be relatively conscious is to be in a rage almost all the time.

I don’t think there is a single social issue I haven’t spoken on.

Women must tell men always that they are the strong ones. They are the big, the strong, the wonderful. In truth, women are the strong ones. It is just my opinion, I am not a professor.

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.

Every reform movement has a lunatic fringe.

Chinese people themselves, they really want change.

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.

It’s hard to wrap my head around the fact that there are people who can’t or won’t see what Black Lives Matter is trying to accomplish.

Women may fall when there’s no strength in men.

There is plenty of building material and more than enough manpower to make a decent home for every Cuban. But if we continue to wait for the golden calf, a thousand years will have gone by, and the problem will remain the same.

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.

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

I don’t think any country is perfect. It’s our responsibility to do the best we can do to change the things we don’t like. I think that’s part of social responsibility, and everybody is going to do that in their own way.

But let me tell you, this gender thing is history. You’re looking at a guy who sat down with Margaret Thatcher across the table and talked about serious issues.