Quotes from Gloria Steinem

There is nothing more fundamental than the idea that the government does not have a right to decide when and whether we have children.

The thing about aging is all your old lovers, pretty much if they were really friends, become your family. It's great. You have those terrible feelings of possessiveness and uncertainty go out the window. You have what you shared. You know you would help each other in times of trouble no matter what.

Writing is the only thing that, when I do it, I don't feel I should be doing something else.

Life after 50 or 60 is itself another country, as different as adolescence is from childhood, or as adulthood is from adolescence - and just as adventurous.

To say 'radical feminist' is only a way of indicating that I believe the sexual caste system is a root of race and class and other divisions.

Gender is probably the most restricting force in American life.

I keep thinking: 'Georgia O'Keeffe wouldn't have had Botox.'

The surest way to be alone is to get married.

Mama grizzlies mate later than other bears. They have two cubs instead of four. They wait four years - about twice as long as other bears - between having cubs. And after they're pregnant, if winter is hard or their health is not good or the food supply is uncertain, they re-absorb the embryo into their body.

Any woman who chooses to behave like a full human being should be warned that the armies of the status quo will treat her as something of a dirty joke. That's their natural and first weapon. She will need her sisterhood.

I was the first woman to speak ever at the National Press Club, and they gave me a necktie.

Nothing changes the gender equation more significantly than women's economic freedom.

I hate to generalize, but in general, both men and women suffer from ageism. Men much less because men gain power as they get older. Women lose power as they get older. Men are seen as gaining experience and being distinguished. Sons look forward to replacing their fathers.

In a way, women are a psychic immigrant group.

The Miss America Pageant reinforces a belief that women are merely how they look and how they please.

People start to talk about post-racist, post-feminist. What does that mean? We're clearly not post either. Would you say post-democracy? Clearly we haven't reached true democracy yet.

I think if women are visible in the media, truly visible, in an empowered role, it empowers us to be more visible in any area of our lives.

Women are liked better when they lose.

Women are more than smart enough to see that McCain's policies are a disaster... He is anti- every reproductive issue we've ever fought for.

I'd like to be played as a child by Natalie Wood. I'd have some romantic scenes as Audrey Hepburn and have gritty black-and-white scenes as Patricia Neal.

Even before Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton threw their exploratory committees into the ring, every reporter seemed to be asking, 'Which candidate are Americans more ready for: a white woman or a black man?'

The error that we tend to make is that we think that women's magazines are what editors want and what their readers want - and thus are social indicators - when, in fact, they are what advertisers want. They're just advertising indicators.

It's the biggest economic influence in a woman's life whether she can decide when and whether to have children or not.

Every social justice movement that I know of has come out of people sitting in small groups, telling their life stories, and discovering that other people have shared similar experiences.