Betty Friedan Quotes

A girl should not expect special privileges because of her sex, but neither should she "adjust" to prejudice and discrimination.

Aging is not "lost youth" but a new stage of opportunity and strength.

Who knows what women can be when they are finally free to become themselves?

A woman has got to be able to say, and not feel guilty, 'Who am I, and what do I want out of life?' She mustn't feel selfish and neurotic if she wants goals of her own, outside of husband and children.

A good woman is one who loves passionately, has guts, seriousness and passionate convictions, takes responsibility, and shapes society.

Men are not the enemy, but the fellow victims. The real enemy is women's denigration of themselves.

Getting older is an adventure, not a problem.

In almost every professional field, in business and in the arts and sciences, women are still treated as second-class citizens. It would be a great service to tell girls who plan to work in society to expect this subtle, uncomfortable discrimination-tell them not to be quiet, and hope it will go away, but fight it. A girl should not expect special privileges because of her sex, but neither should she "adjust" to prejudice and discrimination.

No woman gets an orgasm from shining the kitchen floor.

It is easier to live through someone else than to complete yourself. The freedom to lead and plan your own life is frightening if you have never faced it before. It is frightening when a woman finally realizes that there is no answer to the question 'who am I' except the voice inside herself.

You have to say no to the old ways before you can begin to find the new yes you need.

When she stopped conforming to the conventional picture of femininity she finally began to enjoy being a woman.

The feminist revolution had to be fought because women quite simply were stopped at a state of evolution far short of their human capacity.

You can have it all, just not all at the same time.

A woman is handicapped by her sex, and handicaps society, either by slavishly copying the pattern of man's advance in the professions, or by refusing to compete with man at all.

Some people think I'm saying, 'Women of the world unite -- you have nothing to lose but your men. It's not true. You have nothing to lose but your vacuum cleaners.

Each suburban wife struggles with it alone. As she made the beds, shopped for groceries, matched slipcover material, ate peanut butter sandwiches with her children, chauffeured Cub Scouts and Brownies, lay beside her husband at night- she was afraid to ask even of herself the silent question-- 'Is this all?

We need a new political movement of women and men toward a new society.

It is easier to live through someone else than to become complete yourself.

Regardless of your age, you will always have adventures, unexpected joys and unexpected sorrows.

We can no longer ignore that voice within women that says: 'I want something more than my husband and my children and my home.'

Who knows what women can be when they are finally free to become themselves? Who knows what women's intelligence will contribute when it can be nourished without denying love?

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.

By now, abortion should be obsolete. And I - and probably a lot of other feminists - wish it were obsolete, because abortion, in itself, is not a value - it is simply the right to chose, which is an essential value.

Just as darkness is sometimes defined as the absence of light, so age is defined as the absence of youth.