60 krachtige feministische quotes van inspirerende vrouwen

Laten we het hebben over het F-woord. Juist: feminist. In 2021 noemen flink meer mensen zich feminist dan nog maar vijf jaar geleden, en dat is goed nieuws. Toch is de weg naar échte gendergelijkheid (samen met alle belangrijke nuances daartussenin, en de machtsdynamiek van ras, klasse, seksualiteit en meer) een lange en voortdurend veranderende. Om inspiratie op te doen voor de weg die voor ons ligt, kijken we nog even achterom naar alle inspirerende woorden die al zijn gezegd door baanbrekende vrouwen.

1."To all the little girls who are watching this, never doubt that you are valuable and powerful, and deserving of every chance and opportunity in the world to pursue and achieve your own dreams."

Hillary Clinton

2. "I raise up my voice—not so that I can shout, but so that those without a voice can be heard. … We cannot all succeed when half of us are held back."

Malala Yousafzai

3. "If you want something said, ask a man; if you want something done, ask a woman."

Margaret Thatcher

4. "I'm tough, ambitious, and I know exactly what I want. If that makes me a bitch, okay."
Madonna

5. "It took me quite a long time to develop a voice, and now that I have it, I am not going to be silent."
Madeleine Albright

6. "Of course I am not worried about intimidating men. The type of man who will be intimidated by me is exactly the type of man I have no interest in."
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

7. "Feminism isn't about making women stronger. Women are already strong, it's about changing the way the world perceives that strength."
G.D. Anderson

8. "Women are always saying, 'We can do anything that men can do.' But men should be saying, 'We can do anything that women can do."
Gloria Steinem

9. "I love to see a young girl go out and grab the world by the lapels. Life's a bitch. You've got to go out and kick ass."
Maya Angelou

10. "I am a woman / Phenomenally / Phenomenal woman / That's me."
Maya Angelou

11. "Women belong in all places where decisions are being made. … It shouldn't be that women are the exception. "
Ruth Bader Ginsburg

12. "You don't have to be pretty. You don't owe prettiness to anyone. Not to your boyfriend/spouse/partner, not to your co-workers, especially not to random men on the street. You don't owe it to your mother, you don't owe it to your children, you don't owe it to civilization in general. Prettiness is not a rent you pay for occupying a space marked 'female.'"
Erin McKean

13. "A woman with a voice is, by definition, a strong woman."
Melinda Gates

14. "A feminist is anyone who recognizes the equality and full humanity of women and men."
Gloria Steinem

15. "There's something so special about a woman who dominates in a man's world. It takes a certain grace, strength, intelligence, fearlessness, and the nerve to never take no for an answer."
Rihanna

16. "There is no limit to what we, as women, can accomplish."
Michelle Obama

17. "When a man gives his opinion, he's a man; when a woman gives her opinion, she's a bitch."
Bette Davis

18. "I always wanted to be a femme fatale. Even when I was a young girl, I never really wanted to be a girl. I wanted to be a woman."
Diane von Furstenberg

19. "I am not free while any woman is unfree, even when her shackles are very different from my own."
Audre Lorde

20. "When there are no ceilings, the sky's the limit. So let's keep going—let's keep going until every one of the 161 million women and girls across America has the opportunity she deserves to have."
Hillary Clinton

21. "Feminism is for everybody."
bell hooks

22. "Women are leaders everywhere you look—from the CEO who runs a Fortune 500 company to the housewife who raises her children and heads her household. Our country was built by strong women, and we will continue to break down walls and defy stereotypes."
Nancy Pelosi

23. "The more I have spoken about feminism the more I have realized that fighting for women's rights has too often become synonymous with man-hating. If there is one thing I know for certain, it is that this has to stop."
Emma Watson

24. "Words have power. TV has power. My pen has power."
Shonda Rhimes

25. "We need women at all levels, including the top, to change the dynamic, reshape the conversation, to make sure women's voices are heard and heeded, not overlooked and ignored."
Sheryl Sandberg

26. "Whether I am meant to or not, I challenge assumptions about women. I do make some people uncomfortable, which I'm well aware of, but that's just part of coming to grips with what I believe is still one of the most important pieces of unfinished business in human history—empowering women to be able to stand up for themselves."
Hillary Clinton

27. "We need to reshape our own perception of how we view ourselves. We have to step up as women and take the lead."
Beyoncé

28. "Women must learn to play the game as men do."
Eleanor Roosevelt

29. "You could make a case that, along with the technological revolution, the most provocative upending destabilizing thrilling change in the course of human history is that we’re finally in it. … We're here now, women are in the world, and we will not be bullied."
Meryl Streep

30. "No woman should be told she can't make decisions about her own body. When women's rights are under attack, we fight back."
Kamala Harris

31. "Women will be hidden no more. We will not remain hidden figures. We have names. … It was woman that gave you Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. It was woman that gave you Malcolm X. And according to the Bible, it was a woman that gave you Jesus. Don't you ever forget it."
Janelle Monáe

32. "I am a woman with thoughts and questions and shit to say. I say if I'm beautiful. I say if I'm strong. You will not determine my story—I will."
Amy Schumer

33. "For I conclude that the enemy is not lipstick, but guilt itself; we deserve lipstick, if we want it, AND free speech; we deserve to be sexual AND serious—or whatever we please. We are entitled to wear cowboy boots to our own revolution.
Naomi Wolf

34. "I feel now that the time is come when even a woman or a child who can speak a word for freedom and humanity is bound to speak."
Harriet Beecher Stowe

35. "In the future, there will be no female leaders. There will just be leaders."
Sheryl Sandberg

36. "Human rights are women's rights and women's rights are human rights, once and for all."
Hillary Clinton

37. "Women's freedom is the sign of social freedom."
Rosa Luxemburg

38. "Women’s speech—and the fact that we are now listening to it—has enraged men in a way that makes them determined to reëstablish the longstanding hierarchy of power in America. ... And yet this awful truth will not stop women from speaking, and I do not think that it will turn a movement into a moment. It has become clear that there is not nearly enough left to lose."
Jia Tolentino

39. "Justice is about making sure that being polite is not the same thing as being quiet. In fact, often times, the most righteous thing you can do is shake the table."
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

40. "They cannot stand that a refugee, a black woman, an immigrant, a Muslim, shows up in Congress thinking she's equal to them. But I say to them, 'How else did you expect me to show up?'"
Ilhan Omar

41. "Women have discovered that they cannot rely on men's chivalry to give them justice."
Helen Keller

42. "Maybe it just boils down to: I'm a woman who's really into her career, so I'm obsessed with the craft of my work. … There's a romance in that for me.”
Mitski

43. "In my opinion, the most exciting potential of women of color formations resides in the possibility of politicizing this identity—basing the identity on politics rather than the politics on identity."
Angela Davis

44. "Freeing yourself was one thing, claiming ownership of that freed self was another."
Toni Morrison

45. "I have sometimes thought that a woman's nature is like a great house full of rooms: there is the hall, through which everyone passes in going in and out; the drawingroom, where one receives formal visits; the sitting-room, where the members of the family come and go as they list; but beyond that, far beyond, are other rooms, the handles of whose doors perhaps are never turned; no one knows the way to them, no one knows whither they lead; and in the innermost room, the holy of holies, the soul sits alone and waits for a footstep that never comes."
Edith Wharton

46. "Another world is not only possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing."
Arundhati Roy

47. "'It is impossible for you to do it,' was the terrible verdict. 'In the first place you are a woman and would need a protector, and even if it were possible for you to travel alone you would need to carry so much baggage that it would detain you in making rapid changes. Besides you speak nothing but English, so there is no use talking about it; no one but a man can do this.'

"'Very well,' I said angrily, 'Start the man, and I'll start the same day for some other newspaper and beat him.'"
Nellie Bly

48. "I hate to hear you talking so like a fine gentleman, and as if women were all fine ladies, instead of rational creatures. We none of us expect to be in smooth water all our days."
Jane Austen

49. "Women, if the soul of the nation is to be saved, I believe you must become its soul."
Coretta Scott King

50. "Around the world there are countless examples of women rising, taking leadership, taking their destiny into their own hands, inspiring all of us. But women and girls are still the majority of the victims of war. They are over half of all refugees, and the vast majority of the victims of rape and other sexual and gender-based violence."
Angelina Jolie

51. "That man over there says that women need to be helped into carriages, and lifted over ditches, and to have the best place everywhere. Nobody ever helps me into carriages, or over mud-puddles, or gives me any best place! And ain't I a woman?"
Sojourner Truth

52. "More and more women are realizing that only collective strength and action will allow us to be free to fight for the kind of society that meets basic human needs."
Roxanne Dunbar

53. "Of all the nasty outcomes predicted for women's liberation … none was more alarming than the suggestion that women would eventually become just like men."
Barbara Ehrenreich

54. "By propagating women's nature as non-violent they are discouraging women from becoming fighters in the struggle for their own liberation and that of society."
Anuradha Ghandy

55. "I think transwomen, and transpeople in general, show everyone that you can define what it means to be a man or woman on your own terms. A lot of what feminism is about is moving outside of roles and moving outside of expectations of who and what you're supposed to be to live a more authentic life."
Laverne Cox

56. "Black women have had to develop a larger vision of our society than perhaps any other group. They have had to understand white men, white women, and black men. And they have had to understand themselves. When black women win victories, it is a boost for virtually every segment of society."
Angela Davis

57. "For women, then, poetry is not a luxury. It is a vital necessity of our existence. It forms the quality of the light within which we predicate our hopes and dreams toward survival and change, first made into language, then into idea, then into more tangible action."
Audre Lorde

58. "A revolutionary woman can't have no reactionary man."
Assata Shakur

59. "When a woman is assaulted, one of the first questions people ask is, Did you say no? This question assumes that the answer was always yes, and that it is her job to revoke the agreement. To defuse the bomb she was given. But why are they allowed to touch us until we physically fight them off? Why is the door open until we have to slam it shut?"
Chanel Miller

60. "There is no gate, no lock, no bolt that you can set upon the freedom of my mind."
Virginia Woolf

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