“The feminists had destroyed the old image of woman, but they could not erase the hostility, the prejudice, the discrimination that still remained.”

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.

The feminist revolution had to be fought because women quite simply were stopped at a state of evolution far short of their human capacity.

The feminine mystique has succeeded in burying millions of American women alive.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

I knew one thing. I did not want to be a mommy like mommy.

The problem that has no name-which is simply the fact that American women are kept from growing to their full human capacities-is taking a far greater toll on the physical and mental health of our country than any known disease.

To protest free speech in the name of protecting women is dangerous and wrong.

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.

As a single withered tree, if set aflame, causes a whole forest to burn, so does a rascal son destroy a whole family.

I have come not to disturb or destroy any faith, but to confirm each in his own faith – so that the Christian becomes a better Christian, the Muslim, a better Muslim, and the Hindu, a better Hindu.

Time perfects men as well as destroys them.

A debt should be paid off till the last penny; An enemy should be destroyed without a trace.

The biggest guru-mantra is: never share your secrets with anybody. It will destroy you.

I need to remind myself all the time that being afraid of things going wrong, is not the way to make things right. All fear has ever done is try destroy any existing hope I have.

Beauty is spoiled by an immoral nature; noble birth by bad conduct; learning, without being perfected; and wealth by not being properly utilised.

England is a very strong league, with three or four of the best teams in Europe, but, if I had played there, I would have destroyed it, like I have everywhere else.