“To be liberated, woman must feel free to be herself, not in rivalry to man but in the context of her own capacity and her personality.”

—  Indíra Gándhí

"True Liberation Of Women" http://gos.sbc.edu/g/gandhi1.html, speech, inauguration of the All-India Women's Conference Building Complex in New Delhi, India (March 26, 1980). Published in Selected Speeches and Writings of Indira Gandhi, September 1972-March 1977 (New Delhi: Publications Division, Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, Govt. of India, 1984, pp. 417-418).

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update Oct. 2, 2023. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "To be liberated, woman must feel free to be herself, not in rivalry to man but in the context of her own capacity and h…" by Indíra Gándhí?
Indíra Gándhí photo
Indíra Gándhí 35
Indian politician and Prime Minister 1917–1984

Related quotes

Betty Friedan photo

“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. There is no other way.”

Betty Friedan book The Feminine Mystique

Interviews with Betty Friedan, Janann Sherman, ed. Univ. Press of Mississippi, 2002, ISBN 1578064805, p. x.
Source: The Feminine Mystique

Florence Nightingale photo

“That man and woman have an equality of duties and rights is accepted by woman even less than by man. Behind his destiny woman must annihilate herself, must be only his complement. A woman dedicates herself to the vocation of her husband; she fills up and performs the subordinate parts in it. But if she has any destiny, any vocation of her own, she must renounce it, in nine cases out of ten.”

Florence Nightingale (1820–1910) English social reformer and statistician, and the founder of modern nursing

Cassandra (1860)

Margaret Sanger photo

“The basic freedom of the world is woman's freedom. A free race cannot be born of slave mothers. A woman enchained cannot choose but give a measure of that bondage to her sons and daughters. No woman can call herself free who does not own and control her body. No woman can call herself free until she can choose consciously whether she will or will not be a mother.”

Margaret Sanger book Woman and the New Race

Source: Woman and the New Race, (1922), Chapter 8, "Birth Control; A Parents' Problem or Woman's?"

Omotola Jalade Ekeinde photo

“I believe the new African woman is a woman who respects her man and knows that the man is the head of the family, but doesn’t lose herself in that either but commands and demands respect in her own way.”

Omotola Jalade Ekeinde (1978) Nigerian actress and singer

https://naijagists.com/omotola-jalade-ekeinde-wisdom-quotes-top-20-motivational-quotes-sayings-omosexy/ Omotola Jalade Ekehinde speaking on Career.

Edward Carpenter photo

“Let every woman whose heart bleeds for the sufferings of her sex, hasten to declare herself and to constitute herself, as far as she possibly can, a free woman.”

Edward Carpenter (1844–1929) British poet and academic

Love's Coming of Age (1896)
Context: There is no solution except the freedom of woman—which means of course also the freedom of the masses of the people, men and women, and the ceasing altogether of economic slavery. There is no solution which will not include the redemption of the terms “free woman” and “free love” to their true and rightful significance. Let every woman whose heart bleeds for the sufferings of her sex, hasten to declare herself and to constitute herself, as far as she possibly can, a free woman. Let her accept the term with all the odium that belongs to it; let her insist on her right to speak, dress, think, act, and above all to use her sex, as she deems best; let her face the scorn and ridicule; let her “lose her own life” if she likes; assured that only so can come deliverance, and that only when the free woman is honored will the prostitute cease to exist. And let every man who really would respect his counterpart, entreat her also to act so; let him never by word or deed tempt her to grant as a bargain what can only be precious as a gift; let him see her with pleasure stand a little aloof; let him help her to gain her feet; so at last, by what slight sacrifices on his part such a course may involve, will it dawn upon him that he has gained a real companion and helpmate on life’s journey.

Anne Morrow Lindbergh photo

“Woman must come of age by herself…
She must find her true center alone.”

Anne Morrow Lindbergh book Gift from the Sea

Source: Gift from the Sea

Frederick Douglass photo

“The great fact underlying the claim for universal suffrage is that every man is himself and belongs to himself, and represents his own individuality, not only in form and features, but in thought and feeling. And the same is true of woman. She is herself, and can be nobody else than herself. Her selfhood is as perfect and as absolute as is the selfhood of man.”

Frederick Douglass (1818–1895) American social reformer, orator, writer and statesman

Speech at the New England Woman Suffrage Association (May 24, 1886) Nicholas Buccola, edit., The Essential Douglass: Selected Writings & Speeches, Hackett Publishing Company, 2016, p. 307. Sometimes referred to as his “Who and What is Woman?” speech
1880s

Johann Gottlieb Fichte photo

“Marriage is a union between two persons — one man and one woman. A woman who has given herself up to one, can not give herself up to a second, for her whole dignity requires that she should belong only to this one.”

Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762–1814) German philosopher

Source: The Science of Rights 1796, p. 406

Sue Monk Kidd photo

“When a woman starts to disentangle herself from patriarchy, ultimately she is abandoned to her own self.”

Sue Monk Kidd (1948) Novelist

Source: The Dance of the Dissident Daughter: A Woman's Journey from Christian Tradition to the Sacred Feminine

Niccolo Machiavelli photo

“I do feel this: that it is better to be rash than timid, for Fortune is a woman, and the man who wants to hold her down must beat and bully her.”

Niccolo Machiavelli book The Prince

Source: The Prince (1513), Ch. 25 (as translated by RM Adams)
Context: I conclude, then, that so long as Fortune varies and men stand still, they will prosper while they suit the times, and fail when they do not. But I do feel this: that it is better to be rash than timid, for Fortune is a woman, and the man who wants to hold her down must beat and bully her. We see that she yields more often to men of this stripe than to those who come coldly toward her.

Related topics