Betty Friedan Quotes

From my early school days, I was brought up with the belief that we have a duty to use our talents, to volunteer and to make a contribution.

I try to use the attention that I get to help and to serve, and that's really what I'd see as my work - to serve my community, serve the planet, serve my family. And I think a celebrity is someone who draws the attention on themselves, and then it kind of stops there.

We all have our own purpose in life and I feel very strongly that I have a bigger purpose than giving to just my immediate family and friends.

I've made humanitarian causes and my children much more my priority than the Hollywood scene, being liked and getting movie parts.

As my parents taught me, by both words and deeds, a life of public services is as much a gift to the person who serves as it is to those he's serving.

It's not what you get out of life that counts. Break your mirrors! In our society that is so self-absorbed, begin to look less at yourself and more at each other. you'll get more satisfaction from having improved your neighborhood, your town, your state, your country, and your fellow human beings than you'll ever get from your muscles, your figure, your automobile, your house, or your credit rating.

Nothing in life is more liberating than to fight for a cause larger than yourself, something that encompasses you but is not defined by your existence alone.

The self-bound individual always forgets that his self would be safeguarded better and automatically the more he prepares himself for the welfare of mankind, and that in this respect no limits are set for him.

You’re not a human being until you value something more than the life of your body. And the greater the thing you live and die for the greater you are.

If there is one thing I’ve learned in my years on this planet, it’s that the happiest and most fulfilled people I’ve known are those who devoted themselves to something bigger and more profound than merely their own self interest.

Nothing would mean anything if I didn't live a life of use to others.

Charity is a cop-out so traditionally female in its apparent self-effacement that there seems resonant comfort in it. We're no longer supposed to serve the imaginations of men who have dominated us. We are to give up ourselves instead to those whose suffering is greater than our own. Looking down is just as distorting as looking up and as dangerous in perpetuating hierarchies.

...being human always points, and is directed, to something, or someone, other than oneself—be it meaning to fulfill or another human being to encounter. The more one forgets himself—by giving himself to a cause to serve or another person to love—the more human he is and the more he actualizes himself.... What is called self-actualization is not an attainable aim at all, for the simple reason that the more one would strive for it, the more he would miss it. In other words, self-actualization is possible only as a side-effect of self-transcendence.

My parents taught my sister and me the importance of giving back and making a difference in another person's life.

We have to learn that service to the greater good is the greatest satisfaction. That idea is at the basis of all the great traditions dating back into history. When you get inside yourself - and you really find that deep inner peace that's rooted in love - then you can't live a life that we see being manifested in the large parts of the world right now.

People have found inner peace by losing themselves in a cause larger than themselves. Finding inner peace means coming from the self-centered life into the life centered.

I am of the opinion that my life belongs to the whole community and as long as I live, it is my privilege to do for it whatever I can.

My research offers impressive evidence that we feel better when we attempt to make our world better...to have a purpose beyond one's self lends to existence a meaning and direction - the most important characteristic of high well-being.

To give life a meaning, one must have a purpose larger than self.

Make a commitment today to something bigger and more important than yourself.

To find a cause that's larger than yourself and then to give your life to it.

I must admit that I personally measure success in terms of the contributions an individual makes to her or his fellow human beings.

After convincing myself that was maybe you should at least help out your neighborhood, I really started to think about it later on in life.

People who volunteer at the recycling center or soup kitchen through a church or neighborhood group can come to feel part of something 'larger.' Such a sense of belonging calls on a different part of a self than the market calls on. The market calls on our sense of self-interest. It focuses us on what we 'get.'

If you can be a good example to other people, why not try to be that person? I have a bit of a people pleaser in me, but not so much so that it's out of control.