“I have discovered that there is a crucial difference between society’s image of old people and ‘us’ as we know and feel ourselves to be.”

A woman has got to be able to say, and not feel guilty, ‘Who am I, and what do I want out of life?’ She mustn’t feel selfish and neurotic if she wants goals of her own, outside of husband and children.

The feminists had destroyed the old image of woman, but they could not erase the hostility, the prejudice, the discrimination that still remained.

It is perhaps beside the point to remark that bowling alleys and supermarkets have nursery facilities, while schools and colleges and scientific laboratories and government offices do not.

You can have it all, just not all at the same time.

[Feminist:] One who believes in the liberation of that which has been suppressed as female in a man.

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.

Diversity has got to be a part of modern feminism, and I think that my feminism is stronger because its an inclusive thing. I won’t be backed into a corner that polarizes me against other women. And I wished they wouldn’t be either.

I just decided that I didn’t want to be in the academic world, because it was [really] too easy for me at the top. But also it wasn’t active enough for me.

Protectiveness has often muffled the sound of doors closing against women.

Whatever I wrote was heretical. It offended the editors of the women’s magazines.

Regardless of your age, you will always have adventures, unexpected joys and unexpected sorrows.

He’s a male chauvinistic piglet.

Advice? I don’t offer advice. Not my business. Your life is what you make it.

…women who ‘adjust’ as housewives, who grow up wanting to be ‘just a housewife,’ are in as much danger as the millions who walked to their own death in the concentration camps…they ate suffering a slow death of mind and spirit.

Most of the people in the workforce today will spend some years when they also have children and family responsibilities.

We broke through the feminine mystique and women who were wives, mothers and housewives began to find themselves as people. That didn’t mean they stopped, or had to stop, being mothers, wives or even liking their homes.