Here are a few of my favourite quotes from famous women. A lot of the quotes I see on walls, in books, on people’s Facebook quotes are from men- but it turns out women have incredible things to say, too!
“Action without study is fatal. Study without action is futile.” Mary Beard, American historian and archivist involved in the women’s suffrage movement
“War gave me an acute appreciation for what really matters. I have a sense of how the human contact, peace and stability we enjoy, are fragile. Life is about relationships, about family, friends, meaningful human interactions. You have to work for it; protect it; and understand its importance – everything else is just window dressing and can be gone in a second.” Samantha Knutt, Canadian Cofounder and Executive Director of War Child Canada
“I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” Maya Angelou, American autobiographer and poet
“Sometimes being a friend means mastering the art of timing. There is a time for silence. A time to let go and allow people to hurl themselves into their own destiny. And a time to prepare to pick up the pieces when it’s all over.” Gloria Naylor, African American novelist
“We don’t see things as they are, we see things as we are.” Anaïs Nin, French author
“Saying no is difficult because it hilights the tension between exercising your power and tending your relationship.” Barbara Kiviat, American journalist
“It’s all too unfortunate that when a girl or young woman tries to assert herself it’s often labeled as aggressive…when you talk to girls about how girls are expected to act…there’s two extreme labels that are given to them. One is that you are really nice, all the time, and you’re friends with everyone, or you’re a mean girl (of course, they use worse words to describe this). There doesn’t seem to be an acceptable identity for girls that’s somewhere in between where you can be comfortably assertive.” Rachel Simmons, American author
“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.” Margaret Mead, American cultural anthropologist
“And so we live our lives feeling powerless and inauthentic- feeling that the real people are somewhere else, that the characters on the daytime soap or the conversations on the late night talk shows are more real than the people and the conversations in our lives; believing that the movie stars, the rock stars, the celebrities, the People Magazine people live out the real truth and drama of our time, while we exist as shadows, and our unique lives, our losses, our passions, which cannot be counted out or measured, which were not approved, or graded, or sold to us at a discount, are not the true value of this world.” Starhawk, Global justice activist and organizer
“Do what you feel in your heart to be right- for you’ll be criticized anyway. You’ll be damned if you do, and damned if you don’t.” Eleanor Roosevelt, Civil rights advocate, author, speaker, and politician
Maya Angelou
Any great quotes from women that you have?