Quotes from Gloria Steinem

Women are always better liked if we sacrifice ourselves for something bigger—and something bigger always means including men, even though something bigger for men doesn't usually mean including women.

As always, self-esteem had created an ability to be generous.

No wonder the romance of Wuthering Heights endures—as do romantic myths in almost every culture. Indeed, the more patriarchal and gender-polarized a culture is, the more addicted to romance. These myths embody our yearning to be whole. No wonder romance so often begins at a physical distance or across a psychic chasm of class and race,* and thrives on death and separation. Projecting our lost qualities onto someone else can be done more easily from a distance.

That's why male adults, and some females too, experience the presence of a strong woman as a dangerous regression to a time of their own vulnerability and dependence.

What I really want to say: That what the world really needs is a real feeling of kinship. Everybody: stars, laborers, Negroes, Jews, Arabs. We are all brothers. Please don't make me a joke. End the interview with what I believe.

There is a healthier self within each of us, just wating for encouragement

Women are always saying, "We can do anything that men can do." But men are not saying, "We can do anything that women can do.

Change seems recognizable only after it's happened, like putting one's foot down for a familiar stair—and it's not there.

Just pause, let the audience absorb the hostility, then say, 'I didn't pay him to say that.

Everyone has a home but me.

You're always the person you were when you were born. You just keep finding new ways to express it.

MY LAST HOPE IS to open up the road—literally. So far it's been overwhelmingly masculine turf. Men embody adventure, women embody hearth and home, and that has been pretty much it.