Cynthia Payne Quotes

We have taken this action, because as women…we realize that the condition of our sex is so deplorable that it is our duty even to break the law in order to call attention to the reasons why we do so.

Women are emerging as a major force for change. Countries that have invested in girls' education and removed legal barriers that prevent women from achieving their potential are now seeing the benefits.

Anyone who knows anything of history knows that great social changes are impossible without feminine upheaval. Social progress can be measured exactly by the social position of the fair sex, the ugly ones included.

I do not consider myself a feminist. I do not believe that by doing female-oriented films that depict a woman fighting the system, we can change the system.

Women tell me they are different since 21 May - the day I was arrested - it's a positive change, they believe now.

Whenever you bring up women's internal workings, guys want to change the subject. Unless, of course, they're trying to change the laws.

In the struggle against sexual discrimination on Wall Street, Pamela K. Martens is a latter-day Rosa Parks - a woman who, metaphorically speaking, refused to sit in the back of the bus.

Let women issue a declaration of independence sexually, and absolutely refuse to cohabit with men until they are acknowledged as equals in everything, and the victory would be won in a single week.

Legalized licentiousness.... Every wife, every mother, every daughter in the land is awaiting the action of the House today.

Nowhere is woman treated according to the merit of her work, but rather as a sex. It is therefore almost inevitable that she should pay for her right to exist, to keep a position in whatever line, with sex favors. Thus it is merely a question of degree whether she sells herself to one man, in or out of marriage, or to many men!... The economic and social inferiority of woman is responsible for prostitution.

… since the women started out on their crusade they have scored in every project they undertook against unjust laws. I would like to see them help make the laws and those who are to enforce them. I would like to see the whiplash in women's hands.

The world will not change overnight, and liberation will not happen unless individual women agree to be outcasts, eccentrics, perverts, and whatever the powers-that-be choose to call them.

The end goal of the feminist revolution must be, unlike that of the first feminist revolution, not just elimination of male privilege, but of the sex distinction itself: genital differences between human beings would no longer matter culturally.

Just telling women: If you don't speak up, things aren't gonna change. If you don't become an advocate, it's not gonna change. If you don't vote, it's not gonna change. If you don't run, it's not gonna change.

We want to take our activism and our power into action and change things for every woman, everywhere, working in any workplace.

It takes one brave woman to implement change and for other women to be able to follow that.

All the women in Pakistan working for change, don't give up on your dreams, this is for you.

Women speaking up for themselves and for those around them is the strongest force we have to change the world.

... it is the right and duty of every woman to employ the power of organization and agitation in order to gain those advantages which are given to the one sex and unjustly withheld from the other.

Since [violence against women] is rooted in discrimination, impunity and complacency, we need to change attitudes and behavior - and we need to change laws and make sure they are enforced just like you are doing in Cuba.

Change the narrative, change the laws.

I firmly believe today that the only way to stop violence against women is to speak out and refused to be silenced.

My own feminist revolution evolved slowly, and traveled the world with me. To this day I have no idea what dissident professor or librarian placed feminist tests on the bookshelves at the university library in Jeddah, but I found them there. They filled me with terror. I understood they were pulling at a thread that would unravel everything. Now that I am older, I can see that feeling terrified is how you recognize what you need. Terror encourages you to jump, even when you don't know if you will ever land.

There are so many things that we have to be very concerned about. But I always come back to feminism.

Whatever you choose, however many roads you travel, I hope that you choose not to be a lady. I hope you will find some way to break the rules and make a little trouble out there. And I also hope that you will choose to make some of that trouble on behalf of women.