If I were a man, I would strenuously object to the assumption that women have any moral or spiritual superiority as a class.
BETTY FRIEDANThe feminine mystique has succeeded in burying millions of American women alive.
More Betty Friedan Quotes
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Getting older is an adventure, not a problem.
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The feminine mystique has succeeded in burying millions of American women alive.
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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.
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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.
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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?
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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.
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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!
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Just as darkness is sometimes defined as the absence of light, so age is defined as the absence of youth.
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It is easier to live through someone else than to become complete yourself.
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It is frightening when a woman finally realizes that there is no answer to the question ‘who am I’ except the voice inside herself.
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To protest free speech in the name of protecting women is dangerous and wrong.
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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.
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Most of the people in the workforce today will spend some years when they also have children and family responsibilities.
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I wouldn’t be satisfied with a life lived solely on the barricades. I reserve my right to be frivolous.
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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.
BETTY FRIEDAN