Viola Davis Quotes

My illustrious lordship, I'll show you what a woman can do.

I tell you that men will always respect women when they compel it by their actions; and if women today would rise en masse and demand their emancipation the men would be compelled to grant it. The women of the country have the power in their hands, in spite of the law and the government being altogether of the male order.

I created the Women's Federation for World Peace in order to restore all that woman originally lost. You American women don't need a man in the position of grandfather, parents, husband, elder or younger brother. You only need the true Adam.

I don't think a woman has to act like a man to show that she has strength.

Our daughters were coming of age during a rising consciousness about gender equality. Throughout their school years - from kindergarten through graduate school, 1972 to 1992 - women were starting to take their places in areas traditionally reserved mostly for men.

I've always said that I felt women are more heroic.

If I were a woman, I'd simply refuse to speak to any man or do anything for men until I'd got the vote.

Women aren't as mere as they used to be.

Women should be obscene and not heard.

Give us that grand word 'woman' once again, and let's have done with 'lady'; one's a term full of fine force, strong, beautiful, and firm, fit for the noblest use of tongue or pen; and one's a word for lackeys.

Men regarded women as a servant class in the community, and that women were going to remain in the servant class until they lifted themselves out of it.

The role of women is not to be circumscribed.

I myself have never been able to find out precisely what feminism is. I only know that people call me a feminist whenever I express sentiments that differentiate me from a doormat or a prostitute.

The Bible and the Church have been the greatest stumbling blocks in the way of women’s emancipation.

If, by some miracle, women should not ever utter a single protest against their condition, there would still exist among men those who could not endure in peace until her liberation had been achieved.

I do not subscribe to a feminism that demands perfection or super heroic nobility of women. But I do insist that putting women at the service of patriarchy is no victory for us.

I hate the stereotype that women who fight are 'butch' or 'wannabe men.' It's nice to be able to embrace being a beautiful, strong woman.

I think women are strong, and they have never been weak.

I've been a feminist all my life, or at least as long as I've been conscious of being a woman.

We all are doing the best we can. I would like to say that I'm a walking poster board for feminism and women's liberation, but there are things that I do in my life that deeply, deeply fall short of being a statement for being a strong woman. I am flawed as much as anyone else.

There will never be a generation of great men until there has been a generation of free women.

We [women] seek equality. We don't seek sameness.

Women have served all these centuries as looking glasses possessing the magic and delicious power of reflecting the figure of man at twice its natural size.

Feminism, like Boston, is a state of mind. It is the state of mind of women who realize that their whole position in the social order is antiquated, as a woman cooking over an open fire with heavy iron pots would know that her entire housekeeping was out of date.

For a woman emancipation means corruption.