Quotes from Gloria Steinem

People who are experiencing a problem are the most likely to know its solution.

When teachers of randomly selected students are told their students are slow, they become slower; when teachers believe their students are gifted, they become more gifted.

Looking at Barbados and Australia as relatively positive examples, one societal hallmark of self-esteem seems to be an ability to both give and demand fairness, an expectation that extends from the personal to the political.

Her husband stops by on his way to the cashier and suggests I see the huge statue of Crazy Horse that's being dynamited out of the Black Hills. "Crazy Horse riding his pony," he says, "is going to make all those Indian-killing presidents on Mount Rushmore look like nothing.

I soon learned there was a very Indian habit of asking personal questions. It

But it was still the 1960s, and even my most open-minded editor explained that if he published an article saying women were equal, he would have to publish one next to it saying women were not—in order to be objective.

It had taken three murders - Martin Luther King, Jr., and two Kennedys - to leave the country with this choice between Nixon and Hubert Humphrey.

We could double our chances by working for one of these candidates, not against the other. For now, I've figured out how to answer reporters when they ask if I'm supporting Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama. I just say yes.

that conflict follows politics as night follows day

if you've experienced discrimination in one form, you're more likely to recognize it in another. Also

Anger is supposed to be "unfeminine," so we suppress

Eve teasing," the sexual harassment and touching that women may suffer in public, was what my college friends traveled in groups to avoid.

read Plato or Shakespeare or Dante as if we found their books in the street and had no idea who they were. I

Only conflict is news, and

Women are always saying, 'We can do anything that men can do.' But men should be saying, 'We can do anything that women can do.

Six years after that, I went to the White House with Wilma and watched as President Clinton and Hillary Clinton presented her with a Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian honor. As she stood there, strong, kind, and not at all intimidated by another chief of state, I was not the only one in the audience who thought, She could be president. I also thought, In a just country, she would be.

every trip, my pockets full of scribbled notes about new events. Altogether I might never have had the will or the way to do any of the things that matter most to me, had it not been for just being Out There. Taking to the road—by which I mean letting the road take you—changed who I thought I was. The road is messy

when God is depicted only as a white man, only white men seem godly. They

priests dressed in skirts try to trump women's birth-giving power by baptizing with imitation birth fluid, calling us reborn, and going women one better by promising everlasting life. Indeed

All my years of campaigning have given me one clear message: Voting isn't the most we can do, but it is the least. To

There are really not many jobs that actually acquire a penis or a vagina, and all other occupations should be open to everyone.

Instead, 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.

The personal is political. When

In other cases of unadmitted bias, I had used the time-honored movement tactic of reversing the race or sex or ethnicity or sexuality involved, then seeing if the response would be the same.