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Some people think I’m saying, ‘Women of the world unite — you have nothing to lose but your men. It’s not true. You have nothing to lose but your vacuum cleaners.

Betty Friedan

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.
BETTY FRIEDAN

Alone Definition Growth Human Live Love Man Women Work
When I was in high school, even in college, I didn’t have any real image of a career woman or a professional woman.
BETTY FRIEDAN

College Image Myself Professional School
A woman is handicapped by her sex, and handicaps society, either by slavishly copying the pattern of man’s advance in the professions, or by refusing to compete with man at all.
BETTY FRIEDAN

Competition Handicapped Man Pattern Profession Sex Slave Society Women
Men are not the enemy, but the fellow victims. The real enemy is women’s denigration of themselves.
BETTY FRIEDAN

Enemy Fellow Men Victim Women
Each woman is made to feel it is her own cross to bear if she can’t be the perfect clone of the male superman and the perfect clone of the feminine mystique.
BETTY FRIEDAN

Cross Feeling Feminine Herself Women
Some people think I’m saying, ‘Women of the world unite — you have nothing to lose but your men. It’s not true. You have nothing to lose but your vacuum cleaners.
BETTY FRIEDAN

Lose Men People Thinking Unity Women World
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.
BETTY FRIEDAN

Age Crucial Differences Discover Feel Image Know Ourselves People Society
I can’t point to any major episodes of sexual discrimination in my early life. But I was so aware of the crime, the shame that there was no use of my mother’s ability and energy.
BETTY FRIEDAN

Ability Aware Crime Discrimination Early Energy Episode Life Major Mom Myself Point Sexual Shame
life lived only for oneself does not truly satisfy men or women. There is a hunger in Americans today for larger purposes beyond the self. That is the reason for the religious revival and the new resonance of ‘family.
BETTY FRIEDAN

Beyond Life Live Men Purpose Satisfaction True Women
I knew one thing. I did not want to be a mommy like mommy.
BETTY FRIEDAN

Desire Known Mom Myself Ordinary
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.
BETTY FRIEDAN

Ability Children Frustration Goodness Husband Mom Understand
Aging is not “lost youth” but a new stage of opportunity and strength.
BETTY FRIEDAN

Age Lost Opportunity Stage Strength Youth
A good woman is one who loves passionately, has guts, seriousness and passionate convictions, takes responsibility, and shapes society.
BETTY FRIEDAN

Goodness Love Passionate Responsibility Shape Society Women
Advice? I don’t offer advice. Not my business. Your life is what you make it.
BETTY FRIEDAN

Advice Business Empire Fortune Idea Life Offer Willing Power
Most of the people in the workforce today will spend some years when they also have children and family responsibilities.
BETTY FRIEDAN

Children Day Family Force People Responsibility Time Work
This idea that the employment of women, the movement of women outside the home into the work world, and their demand for equality is somehow responsible for increasing juvenile delinquency or the increase in divorce rate, is just so much bullshit.
BETTY FRIEDAN

Divorce Employment Equality Home Ideas Responsible Security Support Women Work World
When she stopped conforming to the conventional picture of femininity she finally began to enjoy being a woman.
BETTY FRIEDAN

Beginning Confront Enjoyment Feminine Photograph Stop Women
The feminists had destroyed the old image of woman, but they could not erase the hostility, the prejudice, the discrimination that still remained.
BETTY FRIEDAN

Destroy Discrimination Feminist Image Old Prejudice Woman
No woman gets an orgasm from shining the kitchen floor.
BETTY FRIEDAN

Cleaning Sex Shining Women
You can have it all, just not all at the same time.
BETTY FRIEDAN

One Liner Patience Time Yourself
American women were frustrated in just the role of housewife – but they also managed to enlarge it. And they weren’t just housewives, they were community leaders.
BETTY FRIEDAN

America Community Dependant Frustrate Frustrated Husband Leader Life Role Self Women
[Feminist:] One who believes in the liberation of that which has been suppressed as female in a man.
BETTY FRIEDAN

Believe Female Feminist Liberty Life Man Suppressed
I’m my age and I feel glorious.
BETTY FRIEDAN

Age Feeling Glorious Myself
The feminist revolution had to be fought because women quite simply were stopped at a state of evolution far short of their human capacity.
BETTY FRIEDAN

Capacity Evolution Feminism Fight Human Quite Simplicity State Stop Women
I realized that what I was saying was threatening, somehow, to the editors of women’s magazines. That it threatened the very world they were trying to paint, what I then called the “feminine mystique.”
BETTY FRIEDAN

Editor Feminism Magazine Myself Realization Threatening
Women, because they are not generally the principal breadwinners, can be perhaps most useful as the trail blazers, working along the bypaths, doing the unusual job that men cannot afford to gamble on.
BETTY FRIEDAN

Earn Gamble Job Men Principal Support Women Work
If women’s role in life is limited solely to housewife/mother, it clearly ends when she can no longer bear more children and the children she has borne leave home.
BETTY FRIEDAN

End Home Leaving Limitation Mom Responsibility Role Wife

Some people think I’m saying, ‘Women of the world unite — you have nothing to lose but your men. It’s not true. You have nothing to lose but your vacuum cleaners.

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Some people think I’m saying, ‘Women of the world unite — you have nothing to lose but your men. It’s not true. You have nothing to lose but your vacuum cleaners.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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