Physical Empowerment Quotes

That's right, karate... made my whole body a weapon.

I've just always felt it's an incredibly empowering thing, particularly for young women, to capitalize on their coordination and their strength. It's a very empowering thing to feel strong in your body.

People want to be empowered to the point where they can thwart their enemies physically.

When I first started working with Victoria's Secret, I wanted to get stronger. That was something I wanted to build on and really be as strong and powerful as I could be. Working with Victoria's Secret, I started really thinking about my body and my muscles.

The thing I like about my body is that it's strong. I can move furniture around my apartment. I can ride my horse... I can play basketball. It's a well functioning machine.

Right now, after giving birth, I really understand the power of my body. I just feel my body means something completely different.

If you don't have the ability or encouragement to use yourself in a physical way, you could become just another talking head. And talking heads run things. That's part of the reason why we're in such a sad state as a planet, because it's all about thinking, and thinking has led to a lot of aggrandizement - taking over [resources] and figuring out how you can steal and leaving people and the planet in an impoverished state.

Now [after doing Pilates], I have muscles of steel and could easily deal with giving birth.

The whole sexiness thing-I don't know if I'm comfortable with that. But it has helped the sport grow. I think it changes how people see women's athletics.

I believe in a world where mothers are not expected to shed any physical evidence of their child-bearing experience. In that same world I believe there is space for exercise to be as much a gift to your brain as it is your body. I don't want to waste my time striving for some subjective definition of perfection. I'd rather rebuild my strength while dancing my ass off...literally .

I think there is no better way to invite a human being to view their body differently than by inviting them to be an athlete, by revering one's body as an instrument rather than just an ornament.

If we are creating ourselves all the time, then it is never too late to begin creating the bodies we want instead of the ones we mistakenly assume we are stuck with.

Sport taught me how to goal set, it really gave me a voice and identity.

When I was a dancer, I felt this great sense of knowing my body and being in my body, and I think it's really easy as women to lose that and not really be one and loving it.

Dancing in public spaces and moving your body freely in a public space is reclaiming what was taken from you when you were violated. The energy of that - you can't capture it, you can't own it. Capitalists can't buy it.It can't be sold. It can't be monetized. And that's why I think it's so powerful.

As an athlete and as a woman, I get my confidence from playing sports because it shifts your focus from what your body looks like to what your body can do for you. That's what we all should be doing. It shouldn't be about looking perfect.

I love that place where you get in running where you're just never out of breath and you just feel like you could go forever. I love that. I love feeling strong.

I really connected with martial arts. I'd always had a fantasy as a kid of being a ninja warrior, so it definitely answered that sort of need in my psyche, too - a need to be superpowerful.

I always thought of it like, 'What can my body do for me?' and not, 'How do I look?'

When I got the script for 'Winter Soldier,' I was so excited to see that my character finally gets to punch somebody! So I took tae kwon do three times a week. I wanted to feel like I could hold my own in a roomful of superheroes.

My body is my weapon, and I have to keep it in shape; I need to feel strong.

I’m much stronger than most women. Consequently, when I work with men, or when I’m partnered by men... We can actually go into kinds of movement that haven’t been available before, simply because I’ve strengthened myself as a woman, not because I’ve weakened him.

Instead of focusing on what my body looks like, I try and focus on how my body works - how strong my body is.

I discovered martial arts, first judo and then karate, and I became quite good at it, because I had something to prove. And more than anything, I needed to feel safe.

American poets celebrate their bodies, very specifically, as Whitman did.