Martha Graham Quotes

Women are allowed more freedoms and we're fighting for more freedoms, we're experiencing more freedoms won.

The history of American women is about the fight for freedom, but it's less a war against oppressive men than a struggle to straighten out the perpetually mixed message about women's role that was accepted by almost everybody of both genders.

We all have to stand up and fight alongside American women to make sure that they have the freedom to control their own futures.

Young women today often have very little appreciation for the real battles that took place to get women where they are today in this country. I don't know how much history young women today know about those battles.

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.

In 1995, I was thrust into the role of reluctant, flag-waving feminist and emotionally-focused artist/advocate.

Susan B. Anthony said that the bicycle did more to emancipate women than any other single thing. The bicycle was linked in the psyches of women at that time as a symbol of practical emancipation. Women could go places, wear their skirts shorter to manage the bicycle, and be independent.

I am not telling men to step away from speaking for women's rights; rather, I am focusing on women to be independent to fight for themselves.

I believe and support the feminist movement, but I am not generally interested in considering women's rights in relation to equality with men, or in a competition with men, but rather within their own rights and feminine space.

The connections between and among women are the most feared, the most problematic, and the most potentially transforming force on the planet.

Women are at last becoming persons first and wives second, and that is as it should be.

Women's art, political art - those categorisations perpetuate a certain kind of marginality which I'm resistant to. But I absolutely define myself as a feminist.

I respect women like Gloria Steinem who paved the way. But when you say 'feminist' now, there is a message that if you are sexy and you acknowledge that part of your personality publicly, then it's somehow an affront to women. And I reject that.

Women have been taught that, for us, the earth is flat, and that if we venture out, we will fall off the edge. Some of us have ventured out nevertheless, and so far we have not fallen off. It is my faith, my feminist faith, that we will not.

So women are at the beginning of building a language, and not all women are conscious of it.

Women are degraded by the propensity to enjoy the present moment, and, at last, despise the freedom which they have not sufficient virtue to struggle to attain.

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.

If women would today would rise en masse and demand their emancipation, the men would be compelled to grant it.

What we suffragettes aspire to be when we are enfranchised is ambassadors of freedom to women in other parts of the world, who are not so free as we are.

My advice to the women of America is to raise more hell and fewer dahlias

Of all the social revolutions now abroad in the world, that of the American women is the least dynamic, the least predictable, the most aimless and divided – in short the most feminine…. As a class, they are today themselves the greatest obstacle to their own advancement.... They are simply ridiculous.

We can no longer ignore that voice within women that says: "I want something more than my husband and my children and my home ...." And work can now be seen as the key to the problem that has no name.

During the ages, no rebellion has been of like importance with that of Woman against the tyranny of Church and State; none has had its far reaching effects.

It is quite time that we [women] had our own party, our own platform, and our own nominees. We shall never have equal rights until we take them.

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.