Quotes for women

Variant: Imperfection is beauty, madness is genius and it's better to be absolutely ridiculous than absolutely boring.

The Cancer Journals, Special Edition, Aunt Lute Books, San Francisco, CA, 1997, p. 13.

Quiet Strength (2000)

1979

Source: Quoted in Man's Search for Meaning and attributed to Friedrich Nietzsche.

We Bereaved (1929)

Shared on her Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/MayaAngelou/posts/10150251846629796, July 4, 2011

As quoted in The Gospel According to Coco Chanel : Life Lessons from the World's Most Elegant Woman (2009) by Karen Karbo

Source: Chance (1913) part II, Ch. 5

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.

Time Enough for Love (1973)

Attributed quotes

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.

Variant: Above all, be the heroine of your own life, not the victim.

Thom Merrilin
(15 October 1991)

(1981) Audre Lorde, “The Uses of Anger: Women Responding to Racism”

As quoted in Believing in Ourselves (1992) by Armand Eisen, p. 39

Book III, Ch. 3
Joseph Andrews (1742)

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.

Source: Tuesdays with Morrie

Source: https://www.globalcitizen.org/en/content/15-quotes-from-chimamanda-adichie-that-have-change/

Source: When You Come to a Fork in the Road, Take It!: Inspiration and Wisdom from One of Baseball's Greatest Heroes

Variant: Despite everything, I believe that people are really good at heart.

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

Source: Strange Angels

Variant: Success is getting what you want. Happiness is wanting what you get.

Source: Communion: The Female Search for Love

Disputed <br class="br">Variant: No one can make you feel inferior without your permission. <br class="br">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 &quot;Bartlett&#x27;s and other sources say her famous quotation can be found in This is My Story, Roosevelt&#x27;s 1937 autobiography. It can&#x27;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/.

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

As quoted in The Gigantic Book of Teachers' Wisdom (2007) by Frank McCourt and Erin Gruwell, p. 410

Source: Pride and Prejudice

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.

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).’ <br class="br">Backbench MP

Source: Island Beneath the Sea

The Times (1980), as cited in [Dale, 2012]
First term as Prime Minister

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.

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.

Source: Loving What Is: Four Questions That Can Change Your Life (2002)

Source: Pride and Prejudice

Variant: You never lose by loving. You always lose by holding back.
Source: Chicken Soup for the Couple's Soul

Variant: Nothing can dim the light which shines from within.

As quoted in Third and Possibly the Best 637 Best Things Anybody Ever Said (1987) by Robert Byrne, #40

Variant: A diplomat is a man who always remembers a woman's birthday but never remembers her age.

Source: Rising Strong

Source: Lady Chatterley's Lover