Quotes from Gloria Steinem

Unlike the Jester and the Clown, who are at the bottom of a hierarchical pile and survive only by making the king laugh, the Trickster is free, a paradox, a breaker of boundaries who makes us laugh—and laughter lets the sacred in. In Native spiritualities, there is often a belief that we cannot pray unless we've laughed.

we have to behave as if everything we do matters. Because it might.

Home is a symbol of the self. Caring for a home is caring for one's self.

Kirjoittaminen on ainoa asia, jota tehdessäni minusta ei tunnu siltä, että minun pitäisi tehdä jotain muuta.

My father did not have to trade dying alone for the joys of the road. My mother did not have to give up a journey of her own to have a home. Neither do I. Neither do you.

In truth, we don't know which of our acts in the present will shape the future. But we have to behave as if everything we do matters. Because it might.

When someone asks me if I believe in God and I say no—I believe in people—I

I'm not sure we can understand another country if we don't understand our own.

The first step toward speaking for others is speaking for ourselves.

The problem for all women is we're identified by how we look, instead of by our heads and hearts.

If you do anything people care about, people will take care of you.

I can go on the road - because I can come home. I come home - because I'm free to leave. Each way of being is more valued in the presence of the other. This balance between making camp and following the seasons is both very ancient and very new. We all need both.

There is no virtue in being on the same page if it's the wrong page.

Citizens who refuse to obey anything but their own conscience can transform countries, it is the basis of any real democracy.

but I grew to love these spontaneous gatherings in shopping malls, university bookstores, and specialty bookshops that couldn't be replaced by the big chains, all the spaces with coffee, comfortable chairs, and the presence of books that allow people to browse and discover interests they didn't know they had.

Laughter is the only free emotion-the only one that can't be compelled.p.181

Taking away the good is even more lethal than pointing out the bad.

I was the only "girl writer," probably because the power to make people laugh is also a power, so women have been kept out of comedy. Polls show that what women fear most from men is violence, and what men fear most from women is ridicule. Later, when Tina Fey was head writer and star of Saturday Night Live, she could still say, "Only in comedy does an obedient white girl from the suburbs count as diversity.

For sad if obvious reasons, women (especially white women who are seduced by access to the powerful) are the only discriminated-against group whose members seem to think that, if they don't take themselves seriously, someone else will.

The purpose of ass-kicking is not that your ass gets kicked at the right time or for the right reason," she often explained. "It's to keep your ass sensitive.

punished people sometimes pass punishment downward, especially to members of their own devalued group.

Whatever you want to do, just do it. Making a damn fool of yourself is absolutely essential.

What we're told about this country is way too limited by generalities, sound bites, and even the supposedly enlightened idea that there are two sides to every question. In fact, many questions have three or seven or a dozen sides. Sometimes I think the only real division into two is between people who divide everything into two, and those who don't.

Adalah revolusionar bagi perempuan untuk menyanyikan kepedihan, tapi lebih lagi bila ia menyanyikan seluruh lagu kehidupan