Gloria Steinem

The future depends entirely on what each of us does every day; a movement is only people moving.

Self-esteem isn't everything; it's just that there's nothing without it.

We learn most where we know the least.

When unique voices are united in a common cause, they make history.

We are so different, yet so much the same.

Experience is everything. Somebody who has experienced something is more expert at it than the experts.

Law and justice are not always the same. When they aren't, destroying the law may be the first step toward changing it.

The first problem for all of us, men and women, is not to learn, but to unlearn. We are filled with popular wisdom of several centuries just past, and we are terrified to give it up.

We tend to forget that every revolution or social change is like a tree — it grows from the bottom up, not the top down. However small it may seem to begin, that does not matter because it will grow.

When the past dies, there is mourning, but when the future dies our imaginations are compelled to carry it on.

Laughter is the only free emotion—the only one that can't be compelled. We can be made to fear. We can even be made to believe we're in love because, if we're kept dependent and isolated for long enough, we bond in order to survive. But laughter explodes like an aha! It comes when the punch line changes everything that has gone before, when two opposites collide and make a third, when we suddenly see a new reality... laughter is an orgasm of the mind.

Dying seems less sad than having lived too little.

I myself cried when I got angry, then became unable to explain why I was angry in the first place. Later I would discover this was endemic among female human beings. Anger is supposed to be 'unfeminine' so we suppress it - until it overflows. I could see that not speaking up made my mother feel worse. This was my first hint of the truism that depression is anger turned inward; thus women are twice as likely to be depressed.

When humans are ranked instead of linked, everyone loses.

A lot of my generation are living out the un-lived lives of our mothers.

Also, one of the simplest paths to deep change is for the less powerful to speak as much as they listen, and for the more powerful to listen as much as they speak.

If you find yourself drawn to an event against all logic, go. The universe is telling you something.

It is more rewarding to watch money change the world than watch it accumulate.

Hope is a form of planning.

The old image of one person with a torch is part of the problem, not the solution. We each need a torch if we are to see where we're going. And together, we create so much more light.