Sarah Polley Quotes

I'm thankful for the work that feminists like Gloria Steinem have done. I am a feminist, but the geography for women today is vastly different than it was in the '60s.

It's self-deceptive to think we're in a post-feminist world when we never tried a feminist world.

The extension of women's rights is the basic principle of all social progress.

When I started working on women's history about thirty years ago, the field did not exist…. People didn't think that women had a history worth knowing

There's a pattern of the pathway opening in a certain way. We stared thinking, there's so many wonderful films about civil rights movements, but there isn't even one yet about the women's movement? It's hard to capture because it's so sprawling, and it's an ideology.

the point of feminism ... is to win women a wider range of experience. Feminism remains a pretty simple concept, despite repeated - and enormously effective - efforts to dress it up in greasepaint and turn its proponents into gargoyles.

Feminism and issues surrounding being female in the world, always, but particularly right now at this complicated cultural moment. It's a huge part of what's important to me.

If you ask me about women's lib, I say I don't even know what that is.

The goals of the feminist movement have not been achieved, and those who claim we're living in a post-feminist era are either sadly mistaken or tired of thinking about the whole subject.

And I think women have come a very, very long way, but they have a long way to go.

The embattled gates to equal rights indeed opened up for modern women, but I sometimes think to myself; that is not what I meant by freedom, it is only social progress.

I was brought up with a very strong sense of what can happen if your society starts to chip away at the small victories women have won for themselves.

It took the United States until 1920 to give women the franchise and another 40 or 50 years to start utilizing women's potential. How many women of incredible potential did we fail and what achievements were lost to all because we never tapped that potential?

Women's issues have always been a part of my life. My goal is to bring the word 'feminism' back into the zeitgeist and reframe it.

There's many women now who think, 'Surely we don't need feminism anymore, we're all liberated and society's accepting us as we are'. Which is just hogwash. It's not true at all.

I think I would have died if there hadn't been the women's movement.

For a few thousand years, women had no history. Marriage was our calling, and meekness our virtue. Over the last century, in stuttering succession, we have gained a voice, a vote, a room, a playing field of our own. Decorously or defiantly, we now approach what surely qualifies as the final frontier.

I'm a feminist; I grew up with feminism, but I also think there's a way in which we need to shake things up so that we can push it further and in other directions.

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.

In no sense of the word am I in sympathy with women’s suffrage ….I have no vote and I’ve raised hell all over this country.

[T]he great social changes are impossible without the feminine ferment.

The creation of a peaceful and sustainable world civilization will be impossible without the full participation of women in every arena of human activity.36 While this proposition is increasingly supported, there is a marked difference between intellectual acceptance and its implementation.

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.

The very same people who 40 years ago were saying that feminism was unnatural and unnecessary are now saying “Well, it used to be necessary, but it’s not any more.”

Every movement takes a century to make its mark. The women’s movement is only 40 some years old.