There is absolutely no evidence that it is harmful to children if their mother’s health, well-being and autonomy and control of her own destiny is maximized by work outside the home.
BETTY FRIEDANIf you were very bright and you became head of a department, as I did, of the psychology department, you were encouraged to go on to graduate work. But as a women you didn’t even think about discrimination.
More Betty Friedan Quotes
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The feminists had destroyed the old image of woman, but they could not erase the hostility, the prejudice, the discrimination that still remained.
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Protectiveness has often muffled the sound of doors closing against women.
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Neither woman nor man lives by work, or love, alone … The human self defines itself and grows through love and work: All psychology before and after Freud boils down to that.
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Regardless of your age, you will always have adventures, unexpected joys and unexpected sorrows.
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I love newspapers. I’ve worked on newspapers, all my life. I’ve always loved it.
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I understood somehow my mother’s frustration. And that it was no good not only for her, but for her children or her husband, that she didn’t have a real use of her ability.
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When I was in high school, even in college, I didn’t have any real image of a career woman or a professional woman.
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If I were a man, I would strenuously object to the assumption that women have any moral or spiritual superiority as a class.
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The situation of women and men is not comparable to worker-boss or black and white.
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Why the increasing emphasis by professional age experts and the media on – and public acceptance of – the nursing home as the locus of age when, in fact, more than ninety percent of those over sixty-five continue to live in the community?
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I’m my age and I feel glorious.
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A good woman is one who loves passionately, has guts, seriousness and passionate convictions, takes responsibility, and shapes society.
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I knew one thing. I did not want to be a mommy like mommy.
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Dominance is a burden. Most men who are honest will admit that.
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It is frightening when a woman finally realizes that there is no answer to the question ‘who am I’ except the voice inside herself.
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The feminine mystique has succeeded in burying millions of American women alive.
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The problem that has no name-which is simply the fact that American women are kept from growing to their full human capacities-is taking a far greater toll on the physical and mental health of our country than any known disease.
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Who knows what women can be when they are finally free to become themselves? Who knows what women’s intelligence will contribute when it can be nourished without denying love?
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I wouldn’t be satisfied with a life lived solely on the barricades. I reserve my right to be frivolous.
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The only way for a woman, as for a man, to find herself, to know herself as a person, is by creative work of her own.
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Aging will create the music of the coming century.
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He’s a male chauvinistic piglet.
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To protest free speech in the name of protecting women is dangerous and wrong.
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By now, abortion should be obsolete. And I – and probably a lot of other feminists – wish it were obsolete, because abortion, in itself, is not a value – it is simply the right to chose, which is an essential value.
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I never set out to write a book to change women’s lives, to change history. It’s like, ‘Who, me?’ Yes, me. I did it. And I’m not that different from other women. Maybe my power and glory was that I could speak my truth as a woman and it was the truth of every woman.
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I won a really big fellowship to go straight on to get my Ph.D. And I went through agonies of indecision, and then I decided not to accept it. I just decided I didn’t want to be an academic.
BETTY FRIEDAN