Quotes from Gloria Steinem

people in the same room understand and empathize with each other in a way that isn't possible on the page or screen.

Listening to these stories reminded me of the words of the great Ghanaian novelist Ayi Kwei Armah: "For seasons and seasons and seasons, all our movement has been going against our self, a journey into our killer's desire.

Filters let in a cup of water," he says, "but keep out the ocean.

Altogether, I can't imagine technology replacing bookstores completely, any more than movies about a country replace going there. Wherever

she is still better known than most living movie stars, most world leaders, and most television personalities. The surprise is that she rarely has been taken seriously enough to ask why that is so.

a crucial purpose of birth families is to make sure we know, value, and even love people we don't agree with.

In thirty years or so, the majority will no longer be European Americans; the first generation of mostly babies of color has already been born. This new diversity will give us a better understanding of the world and enrich our cultural choices, yet there are people whose sense of identity depends on the old hierarchy.

The less gender-polarized the culture, the lower the degree of violence and the greater the degree of democracy.

It is said that the biggest determinant of our lives is whether we see the world as welcoming or hostile. This becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

We talked about the reasons to support political leaders who support us, never mind party labels. It was the kind of campaigning only a movement could do.

In the words of so many daughters who don't yet know that a female fate is not a personal fault, I told myself: I'm not going to be anything like my mother.

At first, feminists were assumed to be only discontented suburban housewives; then a small bunch of women's "libbers", bra burners, and radicals; then women on welfare; then briefcase carrying imitations of male executives; then unfulfilled women who forgot to have children; then women voters...that really could decide elections. That last was too dangerous, so suddenly we were told we were in a "postfeminist" age...

Artists strive to free this true and spontaneous self in their work. Creativity, meditation are ways of freeing an inner voice.

A journey - whether it's to the corner grocery or through life - is supposed to have a beginning, middle, and end, right? Well, the road is not like that at all. It's the very illogic and the juxtaposed differences of the road - combined with our search for meaning - that make travel so addictive.

I like to believe that the road is sharpening my mind and lengthening my life with surprise.

I began to understand that self-esteem isn't everything; it's just that there's nothing without it.

I'm energized by listening to people's stories and trying to figure out shared solutions.

In our weeks of talk, movies and friendship, I watched as Wilma turned a medical ordeal into one more event in her life, but not its definition. I believe she was teaching me an intimate form of The Way. In her words: "Every day is a good day - because we are part of everything alive.

ANYBODY CAN BE WITH YOU when you're right, but only friends are with you when you mess up. Many

Polls show that what women fear most from men is violence, and what men fear most from women is ridicule.

This correspondence was so precious to them that some women were buried with their letters of friendship, yet enough survive for us to see that they wrote in a slender column down the center of each page, leaving wide margins as spaces for a correspondent to add her own words.

Part of traveling over years means coming back to the same place and knowing it for the first time.

You're always the person you were when you were born

She acquired a lifetime aversion to the phrases bless your heart and poor dears.