International Women’s Day 2023: Empowering Feminist Quotes From Inspiring Women
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Words of wisdom from the trailblazers who make us proud to be women
International Women’s Day 2023: Empowering Feminist Quotes From Inspiring Women, Bazaar Arabia has compiled a list here…
To all the women and men continuing the fight for feminism in 2023, get inspired by the words of the trailblazing women who’ve said it best. From Hillary Clinton to Maya Angelou, Gloria Steinem, Rihanna, and all the unapologetic, courageous women in between, these are the uplifting quotes to live by.
International Women’s Day 2023: Empowering Feminist Quotes From Inspiring Women
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.
“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
5.
“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
6.
“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
7.
“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
8.
“I am a woman / Phenomenally / Phenomenal woman / That’s me,”
Maya Angelou
9.
“Women belong in all places where decisions are being made. It shouldn’t be that women are the exception,”
Ruth Bader Ginsburg
10.
“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
11.
“A woman with a voice is, by definition, a strong woman,”
Melinda Gates
12.
“A feminist is anyone who recognizes the equality and full humanity of women and men,”
Gloria Steinem
13.
“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
14.
“There is no limit to what we, as women, can accomplish,”
Michelle Obama
15.
“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
16.
“I am not free while any woman is unfree, even when her shackles are very different from my own,”
Audre Lorde
17.
“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
18.
“Feminism is for everybody,”
Bell Hooks
19.
“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
20.
“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
21.
“Words have power. TV has power. My pen has power,”
Shonda Rhimes
22.
“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
23.
“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
24.
“We need to reshape our own perception of how we view ourselves. We have to step up as women and take the lead,”
Beyoncé
25.
“Women must learn to play the game as men do,”
Eleanor Roosevelt
26.
“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
27.
“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
28.
“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
29.
“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
30.
“In the future, there will be no female leaders. There will just be leaders,”
Sheryl Sandberg
31.
“Human rights are women’s rights and women’s rights are human rights, once and for all,”
Hillary Clinton
32.
“Women’s freedom is the sign of social freedom,”
Rosa Luxemburg
33.
“Women’s speech—and the fact that we are now listening to it—has enraged men in a way that makes them determined to reestablish 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
34.
“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
35.
“Women have discovered that they cannot rely on men’s chivalry to give them justice,”
Helen Keller
36.
“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
37.
“Freeing yourself was one thing, claiming ownership of that freed self was another,”
Toni Morrison
38.
“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
39.
“Another world is not only possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing,”
Arundhati Roy
40.
“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
41.
“Women, if the soul of the nation is to be saved, I believe you must become its soul,”
Coretta Scott King
42.
“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
Written for Harper’s Bazaar US by Harper’s Bazaar Staff