Quotes by Gloria Steinem

We are becoming the men we wanted to marry

Someone asked me why women dont gamble as much as men do and I gave the commonsensical reply that we dont have as much money. That was a true and incomplete answer. In fact womens total instinct for gambling is satisfied by marriage.

I have met brave women who are exploring the outer edge of human possibility with no history to guide them and with a courage to make themselves vulnerable that I find moving beyond words.

Hope is a very unruly emotion.

The first problem for all of us men and women is not to learn but to unlearn.

For me writing is the only thing that passes the three tests of metier: (i) when Im doing it I dont feel that I should be doing something else instead (2) it produces a sense of accomplishment and once in a while pride and (3) its frightening.

Self-esteem isnt everything its just that theres nothing without it.

The act of acting morally is behaving as if everything we do matters.

For me writing is the only thing that passes the three tests of metier: (1) when Im doing it I dont feel that I should be doing something else instead (2.) it produces a sense of accomplishment and once in a while pride and (3) its frightening.

We teach what we need to learn and write what we need to know.

Or perhaps its activist, but on environmental and economic problems, without understanding that pressuring women to have too many children is the biggest cause of environmental distress, and economic courses should start with reproduction, not just production.

Without leaps of imagination, or dreaming, we lose the excitement of possibilities. Dreaming, after all, is a form of planning.

Pop culture shapes our ideas of what is normal and what our dreams can be and what our roles are. Politics, of course, decides how the power and the money in the country is distributed. Both are equally important, and each affects the other.

Most American children suffer too much mother and too little father.

A pedestal is as much a prison as any small, confined space.

Because I have work to care about, it is possible that I may be less difficult to get along with than other women when the double chins start to form.

What Ive learned is that unless its an emergency, like a fire or brain surgery, hierarchy is not necessary and may be damaging. If you have a hierarchy, youre repeating the strengths and weaknesses of one person without allowing for the accumulative strength of a group.

Everything about aging in my experience so far has been a plus. Except the death part!

Happy or unhappy, families are all mysterious. We have only to imagine how differently we would be described - and will be, after our deaths - by each of the family members who believe they know us.

The first problem for all of us, men and women, is not to learn, but to unlearn.