“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.”

When she stopped conforming to the conventional picture of femininity she finally began to enjoy being a woman.

Dominance is a burden. Most men who are honest will admit that.

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.

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.

Men are not the enemy, but the fellow victims. The real enemy is women’s denigration of themselves.

If I were a man, I would strenuously object to the assumption that women have any moral or spiritual superiority as a class.

Instead of fulfilling the promise of infinite orgasmic bliss, sex in the America of the feminine mystique is becoming a strangely joyless national compulsion, if not a contemptuous mockery.

Today the problem that has no name is how to juggle work, love, home and children.

A good woman is one who loves passionately, has guts, seriousness and passionate convictions, takes responsibility, and shapes society.

While 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.

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.

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!

When I was in high school, even in college, I didn’t have any real image of a career woman or a professional woman.

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?

We can no longer ignore that voice within women that says: ‘I want something more than my husband and my children and my home.’

Getting older is an adventure, not a problem.

I have a definition of success.

According to this definition there is nothing so contradictory to his nature as error and falsehood.

The notion that in order to have a nation it is necessary for there to be a common language, a common territory and common culture has failed to stand the test of time or the scrutiny of scientific definition of objective reality…

Miracles are manifestations for which science has no definition, no analysis.

Solutions to problems often depend upon how they’re defined.

Goals too clearly defined can become blinkers.

Boredom is a very self-conscious emotion by definition. Interest is not. So you can actually be completely absorbed in something and, at certain points in your development, not even realize that you’re into it.

Ultimately, that is the definition of bravery: not being afraid of yourself.