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If 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 Friedan

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?
BETTY FRIEDAN

Contribute Freedom Intelligence Love Nourish Women
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

Academic Active Decision Easy Education Enough Myself Top World
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
If divorce has increased by one thousand percent, don’t blame the women’s movement. Blame the obsolete sex roles on which our marriages were based.
BETTY FRIEDAN

Blame Divorce Increase Justice Marriage Percent Reason Role Sex
I’m my age and I feel glorious.
BETTY FRIEDAN

Age Feeling Glorious Myself
Getting older is an adventure, not a problem.
BETTY FRIEDAN

Adventure Old One Liner Perspective Problem
You can have it all, just not all at the same time.
BETTY FRIEDAN

One Liner Patience Time Yourself
We need a new political movement of women and men toward a new society.
BETTY FRIEDAN

Men Movement Politics Society Women
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
By now, abortion should be obsolete. And I – and probably a lot of other feminists – wish it were obsolete, because abortion, in itself, is not a value – it is simply the right to chose, which is an essential value.
BETTY FRIEDAN

Abortion Choice Essential Myself Necessary Women
A 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 FRIEDAN

Children Dreams Freedom Goals Guilty Herself Husband Reality Talk Woman
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
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
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
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
[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
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.
BETTY FRIEDAN

Creative Equality Find Herself Know Man Person Way Women
I knew one thing. I did not want to be a mommy like mommy.
BETTY FRIEDAN

Desire Known Mom Myself Ordinary
No woman gets an orgasm from shining the kitchen floor.
BETTY FRIEDAN

Cleaning Sex Shining 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
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
If 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 FRIEDAN

Bright Department Discrimination Education Encouragement Graduation Head Smart Thinking Yourself
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.
BETTY FRIEDAN

Children Control Evidence Harm Health Home Mother
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
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 won a really big fellowship to go straight on to get my Ph.D. And I went through agonies of indecision, and then I decided not to accept it. I just decided I didn’t want to be an academic.
BETTY FRIEDAN

Acceptance Agony Decision Myself Straight Win

If 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.

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If 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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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