A collection of quotes on the topic of for men, for women, motivational, inspirational.
“As usual, there is a great woman behind every idiot.”
“It is never too late to be what you might have been.”
“I am not what happened to me, I am what I choose to become.”
Variant: I am not what happens to me. I choose who I become.
“Do one thing every day that scares you.”
“The secret of getting ahead is getting started.”
“You must do the thing you think you cannot do.”
Source: You Learn by Living (1960), p. 29–30
Context: You gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You are able to say to yourself, "I have lived through this horror. I can take the next thing that comes along." … You must do the thing you think you cannot do.
“We may encounter many defeats but we must not be defeated.”
“You are what you believe yourself to be.”
Source: The Witch of Portobello (2007), p. 152.
Context: You are what you believe yourself to be.
Don't be like those people who believe in "positive thinking" and tell themselves that they're loved and strong and capable. You don't need to do that because you know it already. And when you doubt it — which happens, I think, quite often at this stage of evolution — do as I suggested. Instead of trying to prove that you're better than you think, just laugh. Laugh at your worries and insecurities. View your anxieties with humor. It will be difficult at first, but you'll gradually get used to it. Now go back and meet all those people who think you know everything. Convince yourself that they're right, because we all know everything, it's merely a question of believing.
Believe.
“If you don’t like the road you’re walking, start paving another one.”
“The secret to getting ahead is getting started.”
“What you do makes a difference, and you have to decide what kind of difference you want to make.”
“It’s better to be absolutely ridiculous than absolutely boring.”
Variant: Imperfection is beauty, madness is genius and it's better to be absolutely ridiculous than absolutely boring.
“Why are women… so much more interesting to men than men are to women?”
The Cancer Journals, Special Edition, Aunt Lute Books, San Francisco, CA, 1997, p. 13.
“Great minds discuss ideas, average minds discuss events, small minds discuss people. ”
“Those who have a 'why' to live, can bear with almost any 'how'.”
Source: Quoted in Man's Search for Meaning and attributed to Friedrich Nietzsche.
“Take your life in your own hands, and what happens? A terrible thing: no one to blame.”
Shared on her Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/MayaAngelou/posts/10150251846629796, July 4, 2011
“Learn the rules like a pro, so you can break them like an artist.”
“A girl should be two things: classy and fabulous.”
As quoted in The Gospel According to Coco Chanel : Life Lessons from the World's Most Elegant Woman (2009) by Karen Karbo
“Being a woman is a terribly difficult trade since it consists principally of dealings with men.”
Source: Chance (1913) part II, Ch. 5
“Always be a first-rate version of yourself, instead of a second-rate version of somebody else.”
As quoted in Business Etiquette for the Nineties : Your Ticket to Career Success (1992) by Lou Kennedy, p. 8
Variant: Always be a first rate version of yourself and not a second rate version of someone else.
Variant: If your actions create a legacy that inspires others to dream more, learn more, do more, and become more, then, you are an excellent leader.
“Women and cats will do as they please, and men and dogs should relax and get used to the idea.”
Time Enough for Love (1973)
“There is no solution because there is no problem.”
“No-one can make you feel inferior without your consent.”
Attributed quotes
“Life's not about waiting for the storm to pass… it's about learning to dance in the rain. ”
“I hope the fathers and mothers of little girls will look at them and say "yes women can".”
“Nothing I accept about myself can be used against me to diminish me.”
Source: Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches
Variant: There is no gate, no lock, no bolt that you can set upon the freedom of my mind.
Source: A Room of One's Own (1929), Ch. 4, p. 90
Frequently attributed to Nin, but without cited source in her work (possibly due to a quotation in Living on Purpose: Straight Answers to Universal Questions (2000) by Dan Millman that attributed the quote to Nin without source).
In March 2013, a former Director of Public Relations at John F. Kennedy University in Orinda, Elizabeth Appell, claimed she had authored the quote in 1979 for an inspirational header on a class schedule: http://anaisninblog.skybluepress.com/2013/03/who-wrote-risk-is-the-mystery-solved/
Disputed
Variant: The day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.
Source: Three Guineas (1938), Ch. 3, p. 109
Context: The outsider will say, "in fact, as a woman, I have no country. As a woman I want no country. As a woman my country is the whole world." And if, when reason has said its say, still some obstinate emotion remains, some love of England dropped into a child's ears by the cawing of rooks in an elm tree, by the splash of waves on a beach, or by English voices murmuring nursery rhymes, this drop of pure, if irrational, emotion she will make serve her to give to England first what she desires of peace and freedom for the whole world.
“Above all, be the heroine of your life, not the victim.”
Variant: Above all, be the heroine of your own life, not the victim.
“I am not free while any woman is unfree, even when her shackles are very different from my own.”
(1981) Audre Lorde, “The Uses of Anger: Women Responding to Racism”
“The most courageous act is still to think for yourself. Aloud.”
As quoted in Believing in Ourselves (1992) by Armand Eisen, p. 39
Source: You Learn by Living (1960), p. 29–30
Context: You gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You are able to say to yourself, "I have lived through this horror. I can take the next thing that comes along." … You must do the thing you think you cannot do.
“What would men be without women? Scarce, sir… mighty scarce.”
Source: https://www.globalcitizen.org/en/content/15-quotes-from-chimamanda-adichie-that-have-change/
“No matter where you go, there you are”
Source: When You Come to a Fork in the Road, Take It!: Inspiration and Wisdom from One of Baseball's Greatest Heroes
“In spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart.”
Variant: Despite everything, I believe that people are really good at heart.
“One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman.”
On ne naît pas femme: on le devient.
Bk. 2, Pt.. 4, Ch. 1: Childhood, p. 267
Source: The Second Sex (1949)
Books, When Will Jesus Bring the Pork Chops? (2004)
Source: When Will Jesus Bring The Pork Chops?
Source: Kabir, Hajara Muhammad (2010). Northern women development. [Nigeria]. ISBN 978-978-906-469-4. OCLC 890820657 note: 1940s, Male and Female (1949)
Preface (December 1960) to The Autobiography of Eleanor Roosevelt (1961), p. xix
“Better to be strong than pretty and useless.”
Source: Strange Angels
“Success is getting what you want..
Happiness is wanting what you get.”
Variant: Success is getting what you want. Happiness is wanting what you get.
Source: Communion: The Female Search for Love
“No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.”
Disputed
Variant: No one can make you feel inferior without your permission.
Source: Sometimes claimed to appear in her book This is My Story, but in The Quote Verifier by Ralph Keyes (2006), Keyes writes on p. 97 that "Bartlett's and other sources say her famous quotation can be found in This is My Story, Roosevelt's 1937 autobiography. It can't. Quotographer Rosalie Maggio scoured that book and many others by and about Roosevelt in search of this line, without success. In their own extensive searching, archivists at the Franklin D. Roosevelt Library in Hyde Park, New York, have not been able to find the quotation in This Is My Story or any other writing by the First Lady. A discussion of some of the earliest known attributions of this quote to Roosevelt, which may be a paraphrase from an interview, can be found in this entry from Quote Investigator http://quoteinvestigator.com/2011/03/30/not-inferior/.
“I am a Woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal Woman,
that's me.”
Variant: When a strong woman recklessly throws away her strength she is worse than a weak woman who has never had any strength to throw away.
Source: Tess of the D'Urbervilles
“Never give up, for that is just the place and time that the tide will turn.”
“I attribute my success to this — I never gave or took any excuse.”
As quoted in The Gigantic Book of Teachers' Wisdom (2007) by Frank McCourt and Erin Gruwell, p. 410
Source: Pride and Prejudice
“Men are afraid that women will laugh at them. Women are afraid that men will kill them.”
Context: "Why do men feel threatened by women?" I asked a male friend of mine. (I love that wonderful rhetorical device, "a male friend of mine." It's often used by female journalists when they want to say something particularly bitchy but don't want to be held responsible for it themselves. It also lets people know that you do have male friends, that you aren't one of those fire-breathing mythical monsters, The Radical Feminists, who walk around with little pairs of scissors and kick men in the shins if they open doors for you. "A male friend of mine" also gives — let us admit it — a certain weight to the opinions expressed.) So this male friend of mine, who does by the way exist, conveniently entered into the following dialogue. "I mean," I said, "men are bigger, most of the time, they can run faster, strangle better, and they have on the average a lot more money and power." "They're afraid women will laugh at them," he said. "Undercut their world view." Then I asked some women students in a quickie poetry seminar I was giving, "Why do women feel threatened by men?" "They're afraid of being killed," they said.
“Men are taught to apologize for their weaknesses, women for their strengths.”
“You should never let your fears prevent you from doing what you know is right.”
“In politics, if you want anything said, ask a man; if you want anything done, ask a woman.”
Speech to members of the National Union of Townswomen’s Guilds, delivered at the Royal Albert Hall (May 20, 1965) ; as quoted in Why Women Should Rule the World, HarperCollins (2008), Dee Dee Myers, p. 227 : ISBN 0061140406, 9780061140402 . The Margaret Thatcher Foundation http://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/101374 gives the following additional information : MT spoke on the theme ‘Woman – No Longer a Satellite.’ The Evening News report of this speech is the origin of a phrase often attributed to her : ‘In politics, ... (etc., as above).’
Backbench MP
“We all have an unsuspected reserve of strength inside that emerges when life puts us to the test.”
Source: Island Beneath the Sea
“Where there is a woman there is magic.”
The Times (1980), as cited in [Dale, 2012]
First term as Prime Minister
“There is no freedom without justice.”
Although this maxim is associated with Wiesenthal (e.g. "Honoring Simon Wiesenthal", Congressional Record—House, Vol. 151, Pt. 15, 21 September 2005, p. 20804), he did not originate the quote, which appears in the context of the labor movement in the 19th century (e.g. Alexander Spencer, "Maintain Your Union", The Typographical Journal, Vol. 10, No. 7, 1 April 1897, p. 266).
Misattributed
Letter to her husband George P. Putnam, on the eve of her last flight
Last Flight (1937)
Context: Please know that I am aware of the hazards. I want to do it because I want to do it. Women must try to do things as men have tried. When they fail, their failure must be a challenge to others.
“When there are no ceilings, the sky's the limit.”
Presidential campaign (April 12, 2015 – 2016), 2016 Democratic National Convention (July 28, 2016)
Context: Tonight, we've reached a milestone in our nation's march toward a more perfect union: the first time that a major party has nominated a woman for President. Standing here as my mother's daughter, and my daughter's mother, I'm so happy this day has come. Happy for grandmothers and little girls and everyone in between. Happy for boys and men, too – because when any barrier falls in America, for anyone, it clears the way for everyone. When there are no ceilings, the sky's the limit. So let's keep going, until every one of the 161 million women and girls across America has the opportunity she deserves. Because even more important than the history we make tonight, is the history we will write together in the years ahead. Let's begin with what we're going to do to help working people in our country get ahead and stay ahead.
“It is only with the heart that one can see rightly, what is essential is invisible to the eye.”
“In the depth of winter, I finally learned that there was within me an invincible summer.”
“You move totally away from reality when you believe that there is a legitimate reason to suffer.”
Source: Loving What Is: Four Questions That Can Change Your Life (2002)
“A wise girl knows her limits, a smart girl knows that she has none.”
“You never lose by loving, you lose by holding back.”
Variant: You never lose by loving. You always lose by holding back.
Source: Chicken Soup for the Couple's Soul
“Let nothing dim the light that shines from within”
Variant: Nothing can dim the light which shines from within.
“The best protection any woman can have… is courage.”
“Women who seek to be equal with men lack ambition.”
As quoted in Third and Possibly the Best 637 Best Things Anybody Ever Said (1987) by Robert Byrne, #40
“Success is getting what you want; happiness is wanting what you get.”
“A diplomat is a man who always remembers a woman's birthday but never remembers her age.”
Variant: A diplomat is a man who always remembers a woman's birthday but never remembers her age.
“A man's face is his autobiography. A woman's face is her work of fiction.”
“good girls go to heaven and bad girls go everywhere”
“A woman has to live her life, or live to repent not having lived it.”
Source: Lady Chatterley's Lover
“A feminist is anyone who recognizes the equality and full humanity of women and men.”
