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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.

Betty Friedan

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
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
Men weren’t really the enemy – they were fellow victims suffering from an outmoded masculine mystique that made them feel unnecessarily inadequate when there were no bears to kill.
BETTY FRIEDAN

Enemy Fellow Male Men Mystic Suffering Victim
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
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.
BETTY FRIEDAN

Diversity Feminism Freedom Goal Modern Myself Part Polarizes Stronger Thinking Way
Today the problem that has no name is how to juggle work, love, home and children.
BETTY FRIEDAN

Children Home Love Name Problem Work
It is frightening when a woman finally realizes that there is no answer to the question ‘who am I’ except the voice inside herself.
BETTY FRIEDAN

Fear Head Realization Scare Voice Women
I’m my age and I feel glorious.
BETTY FRIEDAN

Age Feeling Glorious Myself
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
It is easier to live through someone else than to become complete yourself.
BETTY FRIEDAN

Choice Complete Easy Live Yourself
Protectiveness has often muffled the sound of doors closing against women.
BETTY FRIEDAN

Close Protection Sound Women
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.
BETTY FRIEDAN

Book Change Different History Live Myself Orthodox Set Women Writing
When one begins to think about it, America depends rather heavily on women’s passive dependence, their femininity. Femininity, if one still wants to call it that, makes American women a target and a victim of the sexual sell.
BETTY FRIEDAN

Beginning Call Dependent Feminism heavy Passive Sexuality Target Thinking Victim Women
You have to say no to the old ways before you can begin to find the new yes you need.
BETTY FRIEDAN

Acceptance Need Old Way Yourself
He’s a male chauvinistic piglet.
BETTY FRIEDAN

Insult Male
We need to see men and women as equal partners, but its hard to think of movies that do that. When I talk to people, they think of movies of forty-five years ago! Hepburn and Tracy!
BETTY FRIEDAN

Equality Hard Men Movie Need Partner Thinking Women
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.
BETTY FRIEDAN

Beginning Break Feminism Finding Home Mom Mystery People Stop Wife Women
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
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
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
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
…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.
BETTY FRIEDAN

Adjust Ambition Death Growth Slow Suffering Wife Women
Aging will create the music of the coming century.
BETTY FRIEDAN

Age Century Creation Music One Liner
I wouldn’t be satisfied with a life lived solely on the barricades. I reserve my right to be frivolous.
BETTY FRIEDAN

Frivolous Life Live Reserve Right Satisfaction
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
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?
BETTY FRIEDAN

Acceptance Age Expert Media Nurse Home Professional Public

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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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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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