Kathe Kollwitz Quotes

Women had always fought for men, and for their children. Now they were ready to fight for their own human rights. Our militant movement was established.

The women are, of course, the biggest single group of oppressed people in the world and, if we are to believe the Book of Genesis, the very oldest.

Women have not had their rights come easily.

Women’s rights are human rights.

The struggles women face today are simultaneously very, very old and very new.

'Feminism was established so as to allow unattractive women easier access to the mainstream of American culture and society,' and I'm sure in politics, you would have to acknowledge that it has worked.

Some people ask: "Why the word feminist? Why not just say you are a believer in human rights, or something like that?" Because that would be dishonest. Feminism is, of course, part of human rights in general-but to choose to use the vague expression human rights is to deny the specific and particular problem of gender. It would be a way of pretending that it was not women who have, for centuries, been excluded. It would be a way of denying that the problem of gender targets women.

I was a young feminist in the '70s. Feminism saved my life. It gave me a life. But I saw how so much of what people were saying was not matching up with what they were doing. For example, we were talking about sister solidarity, and women were putting each other down. We were talking about standing up for our rights, and women weren't leaving abusive relationships with men. There were just so many disconnects.

In the nineteenth century, the central moral challenge was slavery. In the twentieth century, it was the battle against totalitarianism. We believe that in this century the paramount moral challenge will be the struggle for gender equality around the world.

Women are very special. I think it's a very special time because a lot of things are coming out and I think that's good for our society and I think it is very, very good for women. And I'm very happy a lot of these things are coming out. And I am very happy - I'm very happy it's being exposed.

Why are women still this underclass? If we all banded together...

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.

A backlash against women's rights is nothing new. Indeed it's a recurring phenomenon: it returns every time women begin to make some headway towards equality, a seemingly inevitable early frost to the brief flowerings of feminism.

Whether we regard the Women's Liberation movement as a serious threat, a passing convulsion, or a fashionable idiocy, it is a movement that mounts an attack on practically everything that women value today and introduces the language and sentiments of political confrontation into the area of personal relationships.

In education, in marriage, in religion, in everything, disappointment is the lot of women. It shall be the business of my life to deepen this disappointment in every woman's heart until she bows down to it no longer.

Women's Studies can amount simply to compensatory history; too often they fail to challenge the intellectual and political structures that must be challenged if women as a group are ever to come into collective, nonexclusionary freedom.

The story of women's struggle for equality belongs to no single feminist nor to any one organization but to the collective efforts of all who care about human rights

I discovered feminism around 1970-72-precisely the time when feminism began to exist in France. Before that, there was no feminism.

I realized that women are still not seen as equal to men. We had a big wave of feminism just before my generation was born. We're still sitting on this wave. There are very militant people and very aggressive women at the top of that wave but I think we have a new version of it now.

As I get older I think, contrary to modern assumption but in line with the old Lerner and Lowe song, that it would actually benefit both them and society if - to quote Professor Higgins - a woman could be more like a man.

The whole world is starting to realize that it was the most unwise thing for our society to have ignored women power, to run the society with male priorities.

I have come to understand that in order to effectively advance women's rights, we need to galvanize a global women's movement.

The battle for the individual rights of women is one of long standing and none of us should countenance anything which undermines it.

Women’s rights are human rights and human rights are women’s rights.

I'm not surprised about the lack of women on boardrooms. They were only emancipated 200 years ago, and historically, men have dominated. I welcome women as long as they qualify for the job.