Quotes from Gloria Steinem

The driver, an old Irish woman, the only such cabbie I've ever seen, turned to us at a traffic light and said the immortal words, "Honey, if men could get pregnant, abortion would be a sacrament!

I can go on the road - because I can come home. I come home - because I'm free to leave. Each way of being is more valued in the presence of the other.

Men embody adventure, women embody hearth and home, and that has been pretty much it. Even as a child, I noticed that Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz spent her entire time trying to get back home to Kansas, and Alice in Wonderland dreamed her long adventure, then woke up just in time for tea.

We are so different, yet so much the same.

Perhaps the most revolutionary act for a woman will be a self-willed journey—and to be welcomed when she comes home.

At my age, in this still hierarchical time, people often ask me if I'm "passing the torch." I explain that I'm keeping my torch, thank you very much—and I'm using it to light the torches of others.

Sometimes when I'm in the midst of all this, I can hear my mother saying, 'Democracy is just something you must do every day, like brushing your teeth.

Voting isn't the most we can do, but it is the least.

Voting isn't the most we can do, but the least. To have a democracy, you have to want one.

Our grief is not a cry for war. "That's how New Yorkers feel," the driver said. "They know what bombing looks like, and they know the hell it is. But outside New York, people will feel guilty because they weren't here. They'll be yelling for revenge out of guilt and ignorance. Sure, we all want to catch the criminals, but only people who weren't in New York will want to bomb another country and repeat what happened here.

Altogether, if I had to pick one place to hang out anywhere, from New York to Cape Town and Australia to Hong Kong, a bookstore would be it.

When people ask me why I still have hope and energy after all these years, I always say: Because I travel.