Whatever I wrote was heretical. It offended the editors of the women’s magazines.
BETTY FRIEDANWhatever I wrote was heretical. It offended the editors of the women’s magazines.
BETTY FRIEDANWhile I had been, I guess, quite brilliant, academically, in my college years, I also had been editor of the paper, and I loved that. And, that was a much more active thing. And I missed it when I was doing graduate work.
BETTY FRIEDANMost of the people in the workforce today will spend some years when they also have children and family responsibilities.
BETTY FRIEDANA good woman is one who loves passionately, has guts, seriousness and passionate convictions, takes responsibility, and shapes society.
BETTY FRIEDANI 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.
BETTY FRIEDANI wouldn’t be satisfied with a life lived solely on the barricades. I reserve my right to be frivolous.
BETTY FRIEDANA 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.
BETTY FRIEDANIt is easier to live through someone else than to become complete yourself.
BETTY FRIEDANYou can have it all, just not all at the same time.
BETTY FRIEDANThe feminine mystique has succeeded in burying millions of American women alive.
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.
BETTY FRIEDANToday the problem that has no name is how to juggle work, love, home and children.
BETTY FRIEDANAmerican 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 FRIEDANThe feminists had destroyed the old image of woman, but they could not erase the hostility, the prejudice, the discrimination that still remained.
BETTY FRIEDANThe feminist revolution had to be fought because women quite simply were stopped at a state of evolution far short of their human capacity.
BETTY FRIEDANWhen 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