Eleanor Roosevelt Quotes

People like you to be something, preferably what they are.

Whether at work, at home or in public, we have been trained to believe that who we are at the core of our being is often unacceptable. As a result, we work diligently to live up to - and sometimes down to - what others have made us out to be, whether or not it is an accurate reflection of who we are.

I was a chameleon, the woman men wanted me to be.

Every woman is supposed to have the same set of motives, or else to be a monster.

I was only going to go to college because that's what I thought you were supposed to do.

I spent my whole life trying to play the games males play.

I felt more and more like I was putting on an act - like I was being shoved into this role of 'angry white man in a punk band.'

I was never good at being a boy, but I was always a good student.

I know intimately the struggle of trying to live your life and be yourself while feeling the pressure of an entire community on your shoulders.

I am not what a girl dreams of.

if you ask me, nobody really likes people who are always doing their duty.

It's fine to dress in polka dots and pink crinoline if you want. What I recoil from is the idea that that alone is the only way to be female.

Why couldn't I be more like other girls my age? Take Mrs. Brown's niece. She spent every waking hour sizing up this beau or that, stitching tea towels and petticoats and putting aside a little each month for a set of Spode Buttercup dishes.

We're accepted as long as we conform to what we are expected to be, and I'm sure that's not any different for anyone else.

There is a certain expectation of girls to eventually grow up and behave and fall in line. I've always bucked against that.

I try to define myself through my own choices rather than just accepting society's kind of you're that, you're that, let me put you in a box kind of thing.

This is wonderful, wonderful! Be the bird. You are the bird. Sacrifice yourself to abandoned family values.

However, because they have no actual interests of their own (or if they do, they squelch them in order to fit in) and merely pursue those that they think will look best on their college apps, they're zombies.

In this modern day and age, we have instant coffee, instant tea - instant disbelief. That's the reason we will never become anything. It is because we will never believe in ourselves. We will always listen to the mass majority. If everybody's making fun of you and criticizing you, then you know you're on the right track. 'Cause most people ain't got it.

We grow up being told, "Be a good girl." When you're told to be good, you have to get rid of whatever is bad.

You can't be creative and still be a good girl.

I was rejected in school because I didn't look like the big-breasted, beautiful girls. I was awkward and sad. My mother always said, "Be original!" but I didn't understand until I changed to be like everyone else.

Just being ourselves is the biggest fear of humans. We have learned to live our life trying to satisfy other people's demands. We have learned to live by other people's points of view because of the fear of not being accepted and of not being good enough for someone else.

The real trouble about women is that they must always go on trying to adapt themselves to men's theories of women, as they alwayshave done. When a woman is thoroughly herself, she is being what her type of man wants her to be. When a woman is hysterical it's because she doesn't quite know what to be, which pattern to follow, which man's picture of woman to live up to.

The male dares to be different to the degree that he accepts his passivity and his desire to be female, his fagginess. The farthest out male is the dragqueen, but he, although different from most men, is exactly like all other dragqueens; like the functionalist, he has an identity - a female; he tries to define all his troubles away - but still no individuality. Not completely convinced that he's a woman, highly insecure about being sufficiently female, he conforms compulsively to the man-made feminine stereotype, ending up as nothing but a bundle of stilted mannerisms.