56 Betty Friedan Quotes That Are Worth Knowing
Betty Friedan was an iconic American writer, activist and feminist, who was the creator of The Feminine Mystique, which led to the second wave of American feminism in the 20th century. One of the most prominent figures in the women's movement in the United States, she was the co-founder and first president of the National Organization for Women. The idea of this organization was to empower women into the mainstream of the society, bringing them at par with the opposite gender. Her other notable works include Beyond Gender, It Changed My Life: Writings on the Women's Movement and The Second Stage. This National Women's Hall of Fame inductee was presented with honorary doctorate of humane letter from Smith College, State University at Stony Brook, Columbia University and Bradley University. The Glamour magazine registered Friedan in the list of "The 75 Most Important Women of the Past 75 Years". Here are some of the famous quotes from this champion of feminism.
Aging is not 'lost youth' but a new stage of opportunity and strength.
No woman gets an orgasm from shining the kitchen floor.
Protectiveness has often muffled the sound of doors closing against women.
All year there have been these cover stories that the women's movement is dead and about the death of feminism and the post-feminist generation of young women who don't identify with feminism - and then we have the biggest march ever of women in Washington. More people than had ever marched for anything - not only more women, but more people.
I wouldn't be satisfied with a life lived solely on the barricades. I reserve my right to be frivolous.
He's a male chauvinistic piglet.
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.
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.
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.
I was at a meeting two years ago in Beijing, and I passed a bunch of women who were marching in a protest. Their signs were probably saying something I wouldn't have agreed with at all. But I was so glad to see women marching. And it's happening all over the world.
It is easier to live life through someone else than to become complete yourself.
Certain signs, some of them visible to the layman as well as the scientist, indicate that we have been watching an ice age approach for some time without realizing what we are seeing... Scientists predict that it will cause great snows which the world has not seen since the last ice age thousands of years ago.
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.
Economic equity is an enormous empowerment of women. Having jobs that provide income means that women can be a more effective force, a more equal force, in the political process. Women with income take themselves more seriously and they are taken more seriously.
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.
Who knows what women can be when they are finally free to become themselves?
A good woman is one who loves passionately, has guts, seriousness and passionate convictions, takes responsibility, and shapes society.
Aging is not lost youth but a new stage of opportunity and strength.
Today the problem that has no name is how to juggle work, love, home and children.
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.
It is easier to live through someone else than to complete yourself. The freedom to lead and plan your own life is frightening if you have never faced it before. It is frightening when a woman finally realizes that there is no answer to the question 'who am I' except the voice inside herself.
When she stopped conforming to the conventional picture of femininity she finally began to enjoy being a woman.
We need a new political movement of women and men toward a new society.
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.
It is frightening when a woman finally realizes that there is no answer to the question 'who am I' except the voice inside herself.
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.
Just as darkness is sometimes defined as the absence of light, so age is defined as the absence of youth.
Over and over again, stories in women's magazines insist that women can know fulfillment only at the moment of giving birth to a child. They deny the years when she can no longer look forward to giving birth, even if she repeats the act over and over again. In the feminine mystique, there is no other way for a woman to dream of creation or of the future. There is no other way she can even dream about herself, except as her children's mother, her husband's wife.
Men, also, have in them enormous capacities that they have to repress and fear in themselves, living up to this obsolete and brutal man-eating, bear-killing, Ernest Hemingway, crewcut Prussian sadistic, napalm all the children in Vietnam, bang-bang you're dead, image of masculinity, the image of all powerful masculine superiority that is absolute.
The only kind of work which permits an able woman to realize her abilities fully, to achieve identity in society in a life plan that can encompass marriage and motherhood, is the kind that was forbidden by the feminine mystique, the lifelong commitment to an art or science, to politics or profession. 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.
