Voltairine de Cleyre Quotes

They used to give us a day-it was called International Women's Day. In 1975 they gave us a year, the Year of the Woman. Then from 1975 to 1985 they gave us a decade, the Decade of the Woman. I said at the time, who knows, if we behave they may let us into the whole thing. Well, we didn't behave and here we are.

I think I would have died if there hadn't been the women's movement.

I'm an independent woman and a feminist.

Even if I am simply one more woman laying one more brick in the foundation of a new and more humane world, it is enough to make me rise eagerly from my bed each morning and face the challenge of breaking the historic silence that has held women captive for so long.

Since the beginning of time, women have had to fight for what they deserve. I'm proud to be a part of a wave of strong women on TV!

The only thing the women were after was just the chance to help the world on. But some men were so dreadfully afraid of them that they refused to understand, and talked about 'shrieking sisterhoods' and 'disappointed spinsters' and rubbish of that sort.

Women should be someone and not something.

I think that's the great thing, ya' know, that women can do anything that they want now.

Women's issues have always been a part of my life. My goal is to bring the word 'feminism' back into the zeitgeist and reframe it.

For a few thousand years, women had no history. Marriage was our calling, and meekness our virtue. Over the last century, in stuttering succession, we have gained a voice, a vote, a room, a playing field of our own. Decorously or defiantly, we now approach what surely qualifies as the final frontier.

You may hiss as much as you please, but women will get their rights anyway. You can’t stop us, neither

… in an age when human rights are preached loudly from the rooftops, women had to be accepted as equals and allowed to think and act in their own interests and by their own efforts.

For me, feminism is a movement for which the end goal is to make itself no longer needed.

Women are no longer just born to be married. We are here to compete with everyone and make a place for ourselves under the sun on our own.

Every educated and intelligent person glories in the freedom of women in Western societies to exercise their talents to the full and their freedom to walk safely in the streets of our great cities.

We always had a lot of admiration for feminists who were out there trying to change things for the better for women, who were trying to find equality in the workplace and at home.

Women's history is the primary tool for women's emancipation.

We must do more and with more urgency to empower women.

Could women's liberation ever be a revolutionary movement, not rhetorically but on the ground?

People can say what they want, but historically, feminism in the Dominican Republic has been extremely strong.

We think of a feminist as someone a woman becomes in reaction to personal indignities and social injustices. But the truth is, such inequities only awaken her to the feminist she has always fundamentally been - that is, a person who understands that her first responsibility is to her own humanity. That's why, for my money, the first known use of the word 'feminist' is still the best, appearing in an 1895 book review: a woman who 'has in her the capacity of fighting her way back to independence.

Surely the freedom of women must mean more to us than the freedom of pimps.

the point of feminism ... is to win women a wider range of experience. Feminism remains a pretty simple concept, despite repeated - and enormously effective - efforts to dress it up in greasepaint and turn its proponents into gargoyles.

Until the day arrives when all women decide that our rights are not negotiable, our future choices will not be secure.

I long for the day my sisters will rise, and occupy the sphere to which they are called by their high nature and destiny.