Gloria Steinem was born on March 25, 1934 in Toledo, Ohio is a prominent American feminist, political activist and editor who championed the women’s liberation movement in the late 20th and early 21st centuries.
After graduating from Smith College in 1956, she went to India on a scholarship where she participated in nonviolent protests against the government.
Steinem began her career as a writer and journalist in New York City in 1960, gaining attention with her article “I Was a Playboy Bunny,” which depicted her experiences working as a waitress at Hugh Hefner’s Playboy Club.
Her feminist activism deepened in 1968, leading to the founding of the National Women’s Political Caucus and the creation of Ms. magazine, a pioneering feminist publication.
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Steinem has been involved in establishing several feminist organizations and has authored numerous publications including essay collections and a memoir.
She hosted the 2016 TV documentary series “Woman with Gloria Steinem,” highlighting issues affecting women.
I have curated the top quotes by Gloria Steinem for you.
Best Gloria Steinem Quotes
Dreaming, after all, is a form of planning. ~ Gloria Steinem.
A woman without a man is like a fish without a bicycle. ~ Gloria Steinem.
You are the leader you’ve been waiting for. ~ Gloria Steinem.
We learn from difference, not from sameness. ~ Gloria Steinem.
When I got to the point of serious opposition, I thought it was a step forward from ridicule. ~ Gloria Steinem.
Birds need a nest and they still fly. ~ Gloria Steinem.
Women’s liberation will be men’s liberation, too.
Power in this country is often like hemophilia; it passes through women and then men get it. ~ Gloria Steinem.
Thank you for all your good and beautiful work. ~ Gloria Steinem.
Everyone is unique and each experience is different. ~ Gloria Steinem.
Girls are taught to view their bodies as unending projects to work on, whereas boys from a young age are taught to view their bodies as tools to master their environment. ~ Gloria Steinem.
Writing is the only thing that, when I do it, I don’t feel I should be doing something else. ~ Gloria Steinem.
Famous Gloria Steinem Quotes
I thought they invented the feminist movement. I’ve learned feminism disproportionately from black women. ~ Gloria Steinem.
Oppression has no logic – just a self-fulfilling prophecy, justified by a self-perpetuating system. ~ Gloria Steinem.
I want to say to you that there is life and dreams and surprises after 30-and 40, and 50, and 60, and 77! Believe me, life is one long surprise. ~ Gloria Steinem.
Women have two choices: Either she’s a feminist or a masochist. ~ Gloria Steinem.
We are talking about a society in which there will be no roles other than those chosen or those earned. We are really talking about humanism. ~ Gloria Steinem.
Inner space is the real frontier. ~ Gloria Steinem.
Whether we conform or fight it, the ‘it’ is still the problem. ~ Gloria Steinem.
There is always one true inner voice. Trust it. ~ Gloria Steinem.
Whoever has power takes over the noun – and the norm – while the less powerful get an adjective. ~ Gloria Steinem.
I’m not just a dreamer, I’m a hope-aholic. ~ Gloria Steinem.
We need to remember across generations that there is as much to learn as there is to teach. ~ Gloria Steinem.
The art of being helpful is behaving as if everything we do matters – because we never know which things might. ~ Gloria Steinem.
Nothing will happen automatically. Change depends on what you and I do every day. ~ Gloria Steinem.
No, I’ll take responsibility for my own life, I am going to make a decision. And you know, to this day, I would raise flags on all public buildings to celebrate the chance I had to make that decision. ~ Gloria Steinem.
Top Gloria Steinem Quotes
Behave like everything you do matters. ~ Gloria Steinem.
Men should think twice before making widowhood women’s only path to power. ~ Gloria Steinem.
Law and justice are not always the same. ~ Gloria Steinem.
We are the women our parents warned us against, and we are proud. ~ Gloria Steinem.
Most writers write to say something about other people – and it doesn’t last. Good writers write to find out about themselves – and it lasts forever. ~ Gloria Steinem.
We can tell our values by looking at our checkbook stubs. ~ Gloria Steinem.
If the shoe doesn’t fit, must we change the foot? ~ Gloria Steinem.
One day an army of gray-haired women may quietly take over the Earth! ~ Gloria Steinem.
An education is not a thing one gets, but a lifelong process. ~ Gloria Steinem.
Transformation happens in small groups. Each person can speak and all listen. ~ Gloria Steinem.
Self-esteem isn’t everything; it’s just that there’s nothing without it. ~ Gloria Steinem.
Power can be taken, but not given. The process of the taking is empowerment in itself. ~ Gloria Steinem.
Labeling makes the invisible visible, but it’s limiting. Categories are the enemy of connecting. Link, don’t rank. ~ Gloria Steinem.
If what’s inside your dreams wasn’t already real inside you, you couldn’t even dream it. ~ Gloria Steinem.
Every revolution begins as consciousness because some group of people has to imagine change. ~ Gloria Steinem.
Self-hatred leads to the need either to dominate or to be dominated. ~ Gloria Steinem.
Human beings are communal beings and we can’t exist or prosper by ourselves. We need each other’s support. ~ Gloria Steinem.
Our bodies are instruments, not ornaments. ~ Gloria Steinem.
Popular Gloria Steinem Quotes
We’ve begun to raise daughters more like sons, but few have the courage to raise our sons more like our daughters. ~ Gloria Steinem.
Life after 50 or 60 is itself another country, as different as adolescence is from childhood, or as adulthood is from adolescence – and just as adventurous. ~ Gloria Steinem.
Actually, ‘yes’ is perhaps the most erotic word in the English language. ~ Gloria Steinem.
There’s no greater gift than thinking that you had some impact on the world, for the better. ~ Gloria Steinem.
A feminist is anyone who recognizes the equality and full humanity of women and men. ~ Gloria Steinem.
Some of us are becoming the men we wanted to marry. ~ Gloria Steinem.
Feminism is about friends and sisters and community. ~ Gloria Steinem.
The best way for us to cultivate fearlessness in our daughters and other young women is by example. ~ Gloria Steinem.
Dying seems less sad than having lived too little. ~ Gloria Steinem.
The idea of freedom is contagious. ~ Gloria Steinem.
I believe that change comes from the bottom, not the top. ~ Gloria Steinem.
Empathy is the most radical of human emotions. ~ Gloria Steinem.
I have yet to hear a man ask for advice on how to combine marriage and a career. ~ Gloria Steinem.
Rich People plan for three generations. Poor people plan for Saturday night. ~ Gloria Steinem.
The first problem for all of us, men and women, is not to learn, but to unlearn. ~ Gloria Steinem.
Intelligence in the service of poor instinct is really dangerous. ~ Gloria Steinem.
Feminism has never been about getting a job for one woman. It’s about making life more fair for women everywhere. It’s not about a piece of the existing pie; there are too many of us for that. It’s about baking a new pie. ~ Gloria Steinem.
Inspiring Gloria Steinem Quotes
Intelligence without character is a dangerous thing. ~ Gloria Steinem.
Voting isn’t the most we can do. But it is the least. ~ Gloria Steinem.
A movement is only composed of people moving. ~ Gloria Steinem.
Clinging to the past is the problem. Embracing change is the answer. ~ Gloria Steinem.
We’ll never solve the feminization of power until we solve the masculinity of wealth. ~ Gloria Steinem.
The need to treat ourselves as well as we treat others. It’s women’s version of the Golden Rule. ~ Gloria Steinem.
The story of women’s struggle for equality belongs to no single feminist nor to any one organization but to the collective efforts of all who care about human rights. ~ Gloria Steinem.
Never in my life have I identified myself as a Christian, but wherever there is antisemitism, I identify as a Jew. ~ Gloria Steinem.
Being married is like having somebody permanently in your corner. It feels limitless, not limited. ~ Gloria Steinem.
Once we give up searching for approval we often find it easier to earn respect. ~ Gloria Steinem.
Helping begins with listening. ~ Gloria Steinem.
People waste more time waiting for someone to take charge of their lives than they do in any other pursuit. ~ Gloria Steinem.
It was always clear to me that feminists were going to be called lesbians…so the only answer was to make clear that being a lesbian was as honorable as any other way of living. ~ Gloria Steinem.
The challenge to all of us…is to live a revolution, not to die for one. ~ Gloria Steinem.
Law and justice are not always the same. When they aren’t, destroying the law may be the first step toward changing it. ~ Gloria Steinem.
Far too many people are looking for the right person, instead of trying to be the right person. ~ Gloria Steinem.
The future depends entirely on what each of us does every day; a movement is only people moving. ~ Gloria Steinem.
Whenever one person stands up and says, “Wait a minute, this is wrong,” it helps other people do the same. ~ Gloria Steinem.
Someone once asked me why women don’t gamble as much as men do and I gave the commonsensical reply that we don’t have as much money. That was a true but incomplete answer. In fact, women’s total instinct for gambling is satisfied by marriage. ~ Gloria Steinem.
The art of life is not controlling what happens to us, but using what happens to us. ~ Gloria Steinem.
Now we know that women can do what men can do…but we don’t know that men can do what women can do. ~ Gloria Steinem.
Powerful Gloria Steinem Quotes
But somewhere within each of us, buried at varying depths depending on the age and degree of neglect or abuse, shame or coercion we endured, there is a resistant, daydreaming, rebellious, creative, unique child – a true self who is waiting. ~ Gloria Steinem.
The first resistance to social change is to say it’s not necessary. ~ Gloria Steinem.
The women’s movement and the civil rights movement and the Chinese revolution and practically all big change starts with small groups. You can’t do it by yourself. ~ Gloria Steinem.
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. ~ Gloria Steinem.
We teach what we need to learn. ~ Gloria Steinem.
When unique voices are united in a common cause, they make history. ~ Gloria Steinem.
There’s no emotion more revolutionary than empathy. ~ Gloria Steinem.
Work is valued by the social value of the worker. ~ Gloria Steinem.
Every social justice movement that I know of has come out of people sitting in small groups, telling their life stories, and discovering that other people have shared similar experiences. ~ Gloria Steinem.
Everyone worries about what we should be doing. Do whatever you can. ~ Gloria Steinem.
A good friendship is a conversation that never ends. ~ Gloria Steinem.
Without leaps of imagination, or dreaming, we lose the excitement of possibilities. Dreaming, after all, is a form of planning. ~ Gloria Steinem.
Divisions of age, race, class, and sex are old-fashioned and destructive. ~ Gloria Steinem.
Women may be the one group that grows more radical with age. ~ Gloria Steinem.
So these were the 103 top Gloria Steinem quotes and sayings.
If you like these quotes and sayings, then you can also read my other posts on Laverne Cox quotes and Dolores Hart quotes.
