Betty Friedan Quotes

Youth, what man's age is like to be, doth show; We may our ends by our beginnings know.

There are people who are uncanny, who are finished products at a young age. I wasn't, thank God.

Well-being changes as we move through life, which is why a child's version of it cannot be the same as an old person's.

Every human being is under construction from conception to death.

A woman, no matter the age, is always learning, always becoming. But a man . . . stops learning at fourteen or so.

Embryos turn into babies; buds turn into blossoms; acorns turn into oak trees. The same programming that exists in them exists in each of us - to manifest our highest potential. What is the difference between those things and us? That we can say no...So today, say yes.

We were not always 70, or rather our 70 is an accumulation of all the other ways we were. Our 5-year-old selves became our 10-year-old selves, and so on and on; and if we unpack our selves, the full album appears. Every moment is a part of the following moment, and we are all a continuum.

We too often let the material things serve as indicators that we're doing well, even though something inside us tells us that were not doing our best. That we are avoiding that which is hard, but also necessary. That we are shrinking from rather than rising to the challenges of the age.

The freedom and human capacities of individuals must be developed to their maximum but individual powers must be linked to democracy in the sense that social betterment must be the necessary consequence of individual flourishing.

Human potential is the only limitless resource we have in this world.

The child is father of the man: And I could wish my days to be Bound each to each by natural piety.

That in the human plan nothing is worth the making if it does not make the man.

I have an unshakable belief that mankind's higher nature is on the whole still dormant. The greatest souls reveal excellencies of mind and heart which their lesser fellows possess-hidden, it is true, but there all the same.

A man of over thirty might be held to be at the height of his powers, but not necessarily of his wisdom.

I have found it to be true that the older I've become the better my life has become.

Childhood is not from birth to a certain age and at a certain age. The child is grown, and puts away childish things. Childhood is the kingdom where nobody dies.

People are capable of great, great change during the span of one lifetime. And women even more than men.

Why do some people stop growing at age 30, just going from work to the couch and television, when others stay vibrant, curious, almost childlike into their nineties?

Every civilization depends upon the quality of the individuals it produces.

We get a little further from perfection each year. I think that's called character. I think that's just how it goes.

There is one further distinguishing characteristic of man which is very specific indeed and about which there can be no dispute, and that is the faculty of self-improvement - a faculty which, with the help of circumstance, progressively develops all our other faculties.

Man is the nobler growth our realms supply, And souls are ripened in our northern sky.

I am convinced that most people do not grow up...We marry and dare to have children and call that growing up. I think what we do is mostly grow old. We carry accumulation of years in our bodies, and on our faces, but generally our real selves, the children inside, are innocent and shy as magnolias.

The education of our people should be a lifelong process by which we continue to feed new vigor into the lifestream of the Nation through intelligent, reasoned decisions. Let us not think of education only in terms of its costs, but rather in terms of the infinite potential of the human mind that can be realized through education. Let us think of education as the means of developing our greatest abilities, because in each of us there is a private hope and dream which, fulfilled, can be translated into benefit for everyone and greater strength for our Nation.

The human being is so constructed that he pressed toward fuller and fuller being.