Helen H. Gardener Quotes

It took a lot of women like that, a lot of women who said "I'm not going to do what you expect me to do, because you have no idea what I'm capable of. I'm going to get dirty and use tools and live the way I want" to move the world forward.

Even with protection, even with death threats, I can publish, I can travel and I can live the life that I want and not the one my parents want or some imam somewhere thinks I should live.

After centuries of dormancy, young women... can now look toward a future moulded by their own hands.

I've always played strong women who are doing their own thing.

Women today have the keys to the doors which have been barred against them and they will open them without asking consent.

Some people have tried to change me and tell me what to do, but I haven't done it, and it's worked for me.

When women understand that governments and religions are human inventions; that Bibles, prayer-books, catechisms, and encyclical letters are all emanations from the brains of man, they will no longer be oppressed by the injunctions that come to them with the divine authority of *Thus sayeth the Lord.*

At my age...I'm going to do what I want and I haven't got time for anything else.

I do not want to be civilized. I want to be liberated.

But no one can predict of a certainty what will happen. And none of it will change how I intend to spend the rest of my life. I will live it on my terms. And you... you can have all of me or nothing. I won't be an invalid any longer. Not even if it means losing you.

I want to be in the small percentage of women who don't settle for conventional roles.

I refuse to act the way someone expects me to.

All my life I been doin' what people tell me to do. Now, I'm telling them.

If you have security, you can rebel; if you don't, you hold on to any scraps of it that you have.

A woman without a man is like a fish without a bicycle.

I am a woman of the 21st Century who is self-assured and speaks my mind.

I don't care who or what judges me, nothing's going to stop me from living my life how I choose.

When my mother tells me to do something, I'll do my own thing. A strong character can be good, but sometimes it is not good. I hope it's good in my case.

Freedom lies in being bold.

I'm a strong woman.

If wanted to play a sport, I played a sport. If I wanted to do things that many girls born in 1950 didn't do, I did it.

You'll be free or die!

My idea of feminism is self-determination, and it's very open-ended: every woman has the right to become herself, and do whatever she needs to do.

I was raised to be an independent woman, not the victim of anything.

Gangsta to us didn't have anything to do with Al Capone and stuff like that. It's just about living your life the way you want to live it. And you're not going to let nothing stop you.