Pioneering Women Quotes

People will say, 'Who are your role models, and who are your pioneers?' And the first person that comes to my mind is Billie Jean King because we didn't have women that we could watch when I was growing up.

I want to thank the pioneering women who years ago opened the doors of politics in Costa Rica. My government will be open to all Costa Ricans of good faith.

To me, it's what WWE is: the history, the legacy, all the women who come before this. From Mae Young onwards, their legacy lives forever.

I always felt that I was one of the women who helped lay the foundation for rock and roll. But I'd always been overlooked by the Hall of Fame.

Lizzie Magie was a pretty astonishing woman. She was an outspoken feminist, she had acted, she had done some performing, she had written some poetry, and she was a game designer.

There are many women who came before me who didn't really have the same opportunities that I have had. That's why I always wanted to be a great ambassador - not only today's generation - but for the women who really didn't have a voice, but who paved the way for me.

I feel unbelievably honored to be, you know, with Marie Curie and Goeppert Mayer. It's like, how can I be in the same breath as those three?

I like to play women who blaze trails.

I'm one of the few women in science. I have pioneered that. One of the things I worry about is what that pioneering has done to me. I have had to fight quite hard most of the way through life.

Look at Loretta Lynn. Look at Jeannie C. Rily singing 'Harper Valley PTA' and Tammy Wynette singing about divorce. They were ahead of their times in a lot of ways.

What a lot of people don't know, because in a lot of TV and movies, they have a lot of men talking about computers - it was a woman who invented the first compiler!

I was running for mayor of Syracuse - the first woman to run for mayor in our city, or in New York, and one of the first in the United States. I was known for my strong conservation plank. In 1969, the term 'conservation' was hardly on the tip of every citizen's tongue.

I like to think I opened doors for other women, although that wasn't my original intention.

Yes. I was the first female colonel. I enjoyed being that kind of role model for young women watching the show. A woman can be a colonel! A woman can be in charge! Those were new ideas then.

There aren't as many women in my industry in comedy as there should and could and hopefully will be, but it is interesting growing up watching a woman in a male-dominated industry and kind of, like, plowing ahead.

There's something nice about being part of a trailblazing group. It's hard to look at myself that way because I look at Lisa Leslie and Sheryl Swoops and Rebecca Lobo and Dawn Staley in that way.

I remember the mid-'50s well. It was when my life changed, and I left acting to become one of the first female television news reporters in the U.K.

I owe a debt of gratitude to two other living Justices. Sandra Day O'Connor and Ruth Bader Ginsburg paved the way for me and so many other women in my generation. Their pioneering lives have created boundless possibilities for women in the law. I thank them for their inspiration and also for the personal kindnesses they have shown me.

My grandmother got her law degree from Syracuse University in roughly 1911 and later co-founded with her husband an investment banking firm on Wall Street known as Lebenthal & Co.

I know the first female astronauts selected were definitely an inspiration to me, and so maybe I will be a role model.

There have been women in the past far more daring than we would need to be now, who ventured all and gained a little, but survived after all.

My dad worked with Mary Jackson very closely at one point. I knew Katherine Johnson as well. They were all part of this group of black engineers and scientists within this larger NASA community.

My grandmother was a minister as well, which was not that common in the 1930s.

For throughout history, you can read the stories of women who - against all the odds - got being a woman right, but ended up being compromised, unhappy, hobbled or ruined, because all around them, society was still wrong. Show a girl a pioneering hero - Sylvia Plath, Dorothy Parker, Frida Kahlo, Cleopatra, Boudicca, Joan of Arc - and you also, more often than not, show a girl a woman who was eventually crushed.

Moms Mabley blazed a path for female stand-ups in a housecoat and floppy hat. Phyllis Diller worked equally hard to make herself unattractive to men and non-threatening to women.