Life

35 Feminist Quotes To Get You Through Hump Day

Wednesdays aren't terribly easy to deal with under the best circumstances — removed from both the fresh energy of the start of the week or the promise of freedom that hangs over the end of the week, Wednesdays are generally a bit of dead weight. But if you're a feminist, Wednesdays since the election — ok, let's be real: EVERY day since the election — have been a bit much to deal with. With every day seeming to bring startling new revelations about how the next four years might play out under President-elect Trump, it can feel like a struggle just to make it through your normal routine, let alone feel psyched about fighting from a brighter tomorrow.

It's fine to feel that way. But it's also fine to want to feel inspired, move forward and figure out what to do next — and if that's the headspace you're in, the 35 quotes from feminist thinkers, artists, and activists in this set will help. Drawn from all different eras, these quotes show that there's not just one kind of feminism, nor one kind of feminist goal — but no matter what feminists are fighting for, they fight for it with heart, dedication, and a belief that a better future is always within reach.

Gloria Steinem

“Feminism has never been about getting a job for one woman. It's about making life more fair for women everywhere. It's not about a piece of the existing pie; there are too many of us for that. It's about baking a new pie.”

Roy Rochlin/Getty Images Entertainment/Getty Images

Beyonce

"Women are more than 50 percent of the population and more than 50 percent of voters. We must demand that we all receive 100 percent of the opportunities."

Brad Barket/Getty Images Entertainment/Getty Images

Audre Lorde

"I write for those women who do not speak, for those who do not have a voice because they were so terrified, because we are taught to respect fear more than ourselves. We've been taught that silence would save us, but it won't."

K.Kendall/Wikipedia

Roxane Gay

“I embrace the label of bad feminist because I am human. I am messy. I’m not trying to be an example. I am not trying to be perfect. I am not trying to say I have all the answers. I am not trying to say I’m right. I am just trying—trying to support what I believe in, trying to do some good in this world, trying to make some noise with my writing while also being myself.”

Frederick M. Brown/Getty Images Entertainment/Getty Images

Adrienne Rich

"The connections between and among women are the most feared, the most problematic, and the most potentially transforming force on the planet."

K. Kendall/ Wikipedia

bell hooks

“Overall women in our society are forgetting the value and power of sisterhood. Renewed feminist movement must once again raise the banner high to proclaim anew 'Sisterhood is powerful.'”

Karjean Levine/Archive Photos/Getty Images

Malala Yousafzai

"I raise up my voice—not so I can shout, but so that those without a voice can be heard...we cannot succeed when half of us are held back."

TONY KARUMBA/AFP/Getty Images

Angela Davis

"You have to act as if it were possible to radically transform the world. And you have to do it all the time."

ANDREAS SOLARO/AFP/Getty Images

Maya Angelou

“I’m a feminist. I’ve been a female for a long time now. It’d be stupid not to be on my own side.”

Clinton Library/ Wikipedia

Jessica Valenti

“As different as we all are, there’s one thing most young women have in common: We’re all brought up to feel like there’s something wrong with us. We’re too fat. We’re dumb. We’re too smart. We’re not ladylike enough - ‘stop cursing, chewing with your mouth open, speaking your mind’. We’re too slutty. We’re not slutty enough. Fuck that. You’re not too fat. You’re not too loud. You’re not too smart. You’re not unladylike. There is nothing wrong with you.” —

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Mindy Kaling

"For everyone, men and women, it’s important to be a feminist. It’s important to have female characters. It’s wonderful for women to mentor other women, but it’s just as important for women to mentor men and vice-versa."

Frederick M. Brown/Getty Images Entertainment/Getty Images

Hillary Clinton

"Women are the largest untapped reservoir of talent in the world."

YURI GRIPAS/AFP/Getty Images

Alice Walker

"The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don't have any."

Mark Sagliocco/Getty Images Entertainment/Getty Images

Amy Poehler

"It takes years as a woman to unlearn what you have been taught to be sorry for. It takes years to find your voice and your real estate."

Bryan Bedder/Getty Images Entertainment/Getty Images

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

“The problem with gender is that it prescribes how we should be rather than recognizing how we are. Imagine how much happier we would be, how much freer to be our true individual selves, if we didn’t have the weight of gender expectations.”

Jason Kempin/Getty Images Entertainment/Getty Images

Nora Ephron

“Whatever you choose, however many roads you travel, I hope that you choose not to be a lady. I hope you will find some way to break the rules and make a little trouble out there. And I also hope that you will choose to make some of that trouble on behalf of women.”

Cindy Ord/Getty Images Entertainment/Getty Images

Mary Shelley

“I do not wish women to have power over men; but over themselves.”

Richard Rothwell

Margaret Cho

"Ugly. Is irrelevant. It is an immeasurable insult to a woman, and then supposedly the worst crime you can commit as a woman. But ugly, as beautiful, is an illusion. "

VALERIE MACON/AFP/Getty Images

Michelle Obama

"There is no limit to what we, as women, can accomplish."

NICHOLAS KAMM/AFP/Getty Images

Emma Watson

“It is time that we all see gender as a spectrum instead of two sets of opposing ideals. We should stop defining each other by what we are not and start defining ourselves by who we are.”

Neilson Barnard/Getty Images Entertainment/Getty Images

Yoko Ono

"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."

Gabe Ginsberg/Getty Images Entertainment/Getty Images

Toni Morrison

"I don't think a female running a house is a problem, a broken family. It's perceived as one because of the notion that a head is a man."

FRANCK FIFE/AFP/Getty Images

Angelina Jolie

"Figure out who you are separate from your family, and the man or woman you’re in a relationship with. Find who you are in this world and what you need to feel good alone. I think that’s the most important thing in life. Find a sense of self because with that, you can do anything else."

KHALIL MAZRAAWI/AFP/Getty Images

Margaret Atwood

"We still think of a powerful man as a born leader and a powerful woman as an anomaly."

Imeh Akpanudosen/Getty Images Entertainment/Getty Images

Caitlin Moran

“It's difficult to see the glass ceiling because it's made of glass. Virtually invisible. What we need is for more birds to fly above it and shit all over it, so we can see it properly.”

Jeff Spicer/Getty Images Entertainment/Getty Images

Sojourner Truth

“If the first woman God ever made was strong enough to turn the world upside down all alone, these women together ought to be able to turn it back, and get it right side up again!"

Wikimedia Commons

Kathleen Hanna

"There's just as many different kinds of feminism as there are women in the world."

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Audre Lorde

“My silences had not protected me. Your silence will not protect you. But for every real word spoken, for every attempt I had ever made to speak those truths for which I am still seeking, I had made contact with other women while we examined the words to fit a world in which we all believed, bridging our differences.”

Elsa Dorfman/ Wikimedia Commons

Geraldine Ferraro

"We've chosen the path to equality, don't let them turn us around."

DON EMMERT/AFP/Getty Images

Amandla Stenberg

"Feminism has undergone different waves in our society, and I feel it’s less about equality between the sexes today and more about liberating people from any type of discrimination caused by patriarchy"

Larry Busacca/Getty Images Entertainment/Getty Images

Ruth Bader Ginsburg

"When I’m sometimes asked when will there be enough [women on the Supreme Court], and I say 'When there are nine,' people are shocked. But there’d been nine men, and nobody’s ever raised a question about that.”

Allison Shelley/Getty Images News/Getty Images

Courtney Love

"I want every girl in the world to pick up a guitar and start screaming."

Studio Havens (Marie Havens)

Jane Fonda

"Feminism is not just about women; it's about letting all people lead fuller lives."

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Susan Faludi

"Feminism's agenda is basic: It asks that women not be forced to choose between public justice and private happiness."

Virginia Woolf

“As a woman I have no country. As a woman I want no country. As a woman, my country is the whole world.”

George Charles Beresford
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