Top 11 Quotes by Sheila Rowbotham

Men will often admit other women are oppressed but not you.

Men will often admit other women are oppressed but not you.

Men, Feminist, Feminism

the so-called women's question is a whole-people question.

People, Whole

Power in the hands of particular groups and classes serves like a prism to refract reality through their own perspective.

Sheila Rowbotham

Power, Reality, Hands

It is no longer enough to point out what we don't like, we have to work out 'What sort of society do we want?

Sheila Rowbotham

Work Out, Want, Enough

In order to create an alternative an oppressed group must at once shatter the self-reflecting world which encircles it and, at the same time, project its own image onto history.

Sheila Rowbotham

Self, Order, Speaking Up

Sheila Rowbotham (1999). “Threads Through Time: Writings on History and Autobiography”, Penguin (Non-Classics)

Values linger on after the social structures which conceived them.

Sheila Rowbotham

Social, Structure, Social Structure

There is no "beginning" of feminism in the sense that there is no beginning to defiance in women.

Sheila Rowbotham

Feminism, Defiance

1972 Women, Resistance and Revolution, ch.1.

Language conveys a certain power. It is one of the instruments of domination. It is carefully guarded by the superior people because it is one of the means through which they conserve their supremacy.

Sheila Rowbotham

Mean, People, Language

Sheila Rowbotham (1999). “Threads Through Time: Writings on History and Autobiography”, Penguin (Non-Classics)

The oppressed without hope are mysteriously quiet. When the conception of change is beyond the limits of the possible, there are no words to articulate discontent so it is sometimes held not to exist. This mistaken belief arises because we can only grasp silence in the moment in which it is breaking.

Sheila Rowbotham

Silence, Limits, Belief