• The family is the basic cell of government: it is where we are trained to believe that we are human beings or that we are chattel, it is where we are trained to see the sex and race divisions and become callous to injustice even if it is done to ourselves, to accept as biological a full system of authoritarian government.
• Happy or unhappy, families are all mysterious. We have only to imagine how differently we would be described -- and will be, after our deaths -- by each of the family members who believe they know us.
• A woman reading Playboy feels a little like a Jew reading a Nazi manual.
• Planning ahead is a measure of class. The rich and even the middle class plan for future generations, but the poor can plan ahead only a few weeks or days.
• Writing is the only thing that, when I do it, I don't feel I should be doing something else.
• From pacifist to terrorist, each person condemns violence -- and then adds one cherished case in which it may be justified.
• No man can call himself liberal, or radical, or even a conservative advocate of fair play, if his work depends in any way on the unpaid or underpaid labor of women at home, or in the office.
• The only thing I can't stand is discomfort.
• For much of the female half of the world, food is the first signal of our inferiority. It lets us know that our own families may consider female bodies to be less deserving, less needy, less valuable.
• Evil is obvious only in retrospect.
• [About "Dr. Ruth" Westheimer:] She has become the Julia Child of sex.
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About These Quotes
Quote collection assembled by Jone Johnson Lewis. Each quotation page in this collection and the entire collection © Jone Johnson Lewis 1997-2005. This is an informal collection assembled over many years. I regret that I am not be able to provide the original source if it is not listed with the quote.
Citation information:
Jone Johnson Lewis. "Gloria Steinem Quotes." About Women's History. URL: http://womenshistory.about.com/cs/quotes/qu_g_steinem.htm . Date accessed: (today). (More on how to cite online sources including this page)
