Dora Russell Quotes

I feel like we need to understand feminism more as a tool to mediate, counteract, to ultimately defeat patriarchy and restore balance to our government, our culture and our ways of thinking and structuring the world. I think we've had a very "masculine" sensibility for a long time, and I think we need to go back to the roots of social imbalance. I think we have to try to right that first, and from there and all these more pressing issues will follow.

The women's movement is filled with tyrants, just as men's political movements are equally filled.

Why is there even a conversation about feminism?

I call myself a feminist when people ask me if I am, and of course I am 'cause it's about equality, so I hope everyone is. You know you're working in a patriarchal society when the word "feminist" has a weird connotation.

Whenever I hear a man talking of the advantages of our ill-used sex, I look upon it as the prelude to some new act of authority.

The goals of the feminist movement have not been achieved, and those who claim we're living in a post-feminist era are either sadly mistaken or tired of thinking about the whole subject.

People feel removed from sexism. 'I'm not a sexist, but I'm not a feminist.' They think there's this fuzzy middle ground. There's no fuzzy middle ground. You either believe that women are people or you don't. It's that simple.

If you ask me what I believe in today, I believe in feminism. I believe that all human beings are equal. I believe that no one has the right to authority over anyone else. Feminism has to do with everything in the world, a vision of how the world can be. I have great doubts about Utopias, but I just keep on thinking there is a better way to live than the way we live now.

Misogyny is ingrained in people from the time they are born. So to me, feminism is probably the most important movement that you could embrace, because it's just basically another word for equality.

The voice of woman has been silenced in the state, the church, and the home, but man cannot fulfill his destiny alone, he cannot redeem his race unaided.

To promote a woman to bear rule, superiority, dominion, or empire above any realm, nation, or city, is repugnant to nature; contumely to God, a thing most contrary to his revealed will and approved ordinance; and finally, it is the subversion of good order, of all equity and justice.

That seems to be the haunting fear of mankind - that the advancement of women will sometime, someway, someplace, interfere with some man's comfort.

Despite the fact that feminists say they're not getting a fair deal, women are still very powerful.

For a woman emancipation means corruption.

We have to overcome the practice of male domination - even though it's changing, and changing in Liberia quite drastically.

I'm an ardent feminist.

Feminism was recognized by the average man as a conflict in which it was impossible for a man, as a chivalrous gentleman, as a respecter of the rights of little nations (like little Belgium), as a highly evolved citizen of a highly civilized community, to refuse the claim of this better half to self-determination.

It's patriarchal society that has freed me as a woman.

When lions paint pictures men will not always be represented as conquerors. When women translate laws, constitutions, bibles and philosophies, man will not always be the declared heard of the church, the state, and the home.

If you're not a feminist, you're part of the problem.

Right now the topic of female empowerment is at the forefront of conversation and it's important we take advantage of the trend while there is added pressure to adjust long-standing beliefs, prejudices, and cultural discrimination.

Feminism is to sexism what black nationalism is to racism; the most rational response to the problem.

Women's liberation as a movement makes some valid points. But in the final analysis, it doesn't matter who wears the pants - as long as there's money in the pockets.

As all advocates of feminist politics know most people do not understand sexism or if they do they think it is not a problem. Masses of people think that feminism is always and only about women seeking to be equal to men. And a huge majority of these folks think feminism is anti-male. Their misunderstanding of feminist politics reflects the reality that most folks learn about feminism from patriarchal mass media.

Women have to define themselves in the eyes of men. They have to fight for their rights, especially in a society that will pretend that there is no fight or no battle, that it's a cliché, that feminists are reactionary, all these things.