“Theory-the seeing of patterns, showing the forest as well as the trees” — Adrienne Rich Copy Share Image
Most women have not even been able to touch this anger, except to drive it inward like a rusted nail. — Adrienne Rich Copy Share Image
“if you unquestioningly accept one piece of the culture that despises and fears you, you are vulnerable to other pieces.” — Adrienne Rich Copy Share Image
No woman is really an insider in the institutions fathered by masculine consciousness. — Adrienne Rich Copy Share Image
The decision to feed the world is the real decision. No revolution has chosen it. For that choice requires that women shall… — Adrienne Rich Copy Share Image
“Any woman who has moved from the playing fields of male discourse into the realm where women are developing our own descriptions… — Adrienne Rich Copy Share Image
Re-vision -- the act of looking back, of seeing with fresh eyes, of entering an old text from a new critical direction… — Adrienne Rich Copy Share Image
I am a feminist because I feel endangered, psychically and physically, by this society and because I believe that the women's movement… — Adrienne Rich Copy Share Image
The most notable fact that our culture imprints on women is a sense of our limits. The most important thing a woman… — Adrienne Rich Copy Share Image
Women have always been seen as waiting: waited to be asked, waiting for our menses, in fear lest they do or do… — Adrienne Rich Copy Share Image
.Women's Studies can amount simply to compensatory history; too often they fail to challenge the intellectual and political structures that must be… — Adrienne Rich Copy Share Image
Responsibility to yourself means refusing to let others do your thinking, talking, and naming for you; it means learning to respect and… — Adrienne Rich Copy Share Image
There is nothing revolutionary whatsoever about the control of women's bodies by men. The woman's body is the terrain on which patriarchy… — Adrienne Rich Copy Share Image
“In a world dominated by violent and passive-aggressive men, and by male institutions dispensing violence, it is extraordinary to note how often… — Adrienne Rich Copy Share Image
When someone with the authority of a teacher, say, describes the world and you are not in it, there is a moment… — Adrienne Rich Copy Share Image
How shall we ever make the world intelligent of our movement? I do not think that the answer lies in trying to… — Adrienne Rich Copy Share Image
Women have been driven mad, “gaslighted”, for centuries by the refutation of our experience and our instincts in a culture which validates… — Adrienne Rich Copy Share Image
We need to imagine a world in which every woman is the presiding genius of her own body. In such a world… — Adrienne Rich Copy Share Image
“Feminism means finally that we renounce our obedience to the fathers and recognise that the world they have described is not the… — Adrienne Rich Copy Share Image
I soon began to sense a fundamental perceptual difficulty among male scholars (and some female ones) for which 'sexism' is too facile… — Adrienne Rich Copy Share Image
The belief that established science and scholarship--which have so relentlessly excluded women from their making--are "objective"and "value-free" and that feminist studies are… — Adrienne Rich Copy Share Image
“Women have been driven mad, "gaslighted," for centuries by the refutation of our experience and our instincts in a culture which validates… — Adrienne Rich Copy Share Image
“Re-vision--the act of looking back, of seeing with fresh eyes, of entering an old text from a new critical direction--is for women… — Adrienne Rich Copy Share Image
“the phantom of the man-who-would-understand, the lost brother, the twin --- for him did we leave our mothers, deny our sisters, over… — Adrienne Rich Copy Share Image
“Responsibility to yourself means refusing to let others do your thinking, talking, and naming for you...it means that you do not treat… — Adrienne Rich Copy Share Image
The repossession by women of our bodies will bring far more essential change to human society than the seizing of the means… — Adrienne Rich Copy Share Image
To become a token woman - whether you win the Nobel Prize or merely get tenure at the cost of denying your… — Adrienne Rich Copy Share Image
“In all societies, women are in double jeopardy; on the one hand we are expected to conform to certain emotional standards in… — Adrienne Rich Copy Share Image
“The urge to leap across feminism to "human liberation" is a tragic and dangerous mistake. It deflects us from our real sources… — Adrienne Rich Copy Share Image
It iscrucial that we understand lesbian/feminism in the deepest, most radical sense: as that love for ourselves and other women, that commitment… — Adrienne Rich Copy Share Image
I am a feminist because I feel endangered, psychically and physically, by this society and because I believe that the women's movement… — Adrienne Rich Copy Share Image
Much male fear of feminism is the fear that, in becoming whole human beings, women will cease to mother men, to provide… — Adrienne Rich Copy Share Image
Each feminist work has tended to be received as if it emerged from nowhere; as if each one of us had lived,… — Adrienne Rich Copy Share Image
Sexist grammar burns into the brains of little girls and young women a message that the male is the norm, the standard,… — Adrienne Rich Copy Share Image
No woman is really an insider in the institutions fathered by masculine consciousness. When we allow ourselves to believe we are, we… — Adrienne Rich Copy Share Image
... if, as women, we accept a philosophy of history that asserts that women are by definition assimilated into the male universal,that… — Adrienne Rich Copy Share Image
“Responsibility to yourself means refusing to let others do your thinking, talking, and naming for you...it means that you do not treat your body… — Adrienne Rich Copy Share
What I search for continuously in my art is adequate language, language I hope can stand beyond any particular occasion. What I'm finding is… — Adrienne Rich Copy Share
“Well, she's long about her coming, who must be more merciless to herself than history. Her mind full to the wind, I see her… — Adrienne Rich Copy Share
I think my work comes out of both an intense desire for connection and what it means to feel isolated. There's always going to… — Adrienne Rich Copy Share
Popular culture entered my life as Shirley Temple, who was exactly my age and wrotea letter in the newspapers telling how her mother fixed… — Adrienne Rich Copy Share
... in a history of spiritual rupture, a social compact built on fantasy and collective secrets, poetry becomes more necessary than ever: it keeps… — Adrienne Rich Copy Share
It's as if, in the mother's eyes, her smile, her stroking touch, the child first reads the message:'You are there!' — Adrienne Rich Copy Share
The women's movement appeared at a very crucial moment in my life. There was a whole political movement asking such questions and others I… — Adrienne Rich Copy Share
The word revolution itself has become not only a dead relic of Leftism, but a key to the deadendedness of male politics: the revolution… — Adrienne Rich Copy Share
The decision to feed the world is the real decision. No revolution has chosen it. For that choice requires that women shall be free. — Adrienne Rich Copy Share
The necessity of poetry has to be stated over and over, but only to those who have reason to fear its power, or those… — Adrienne Rich Copy Share
I think many poets, including myself, write both for the voice and for the page. I certainly write for the person alone in the… — Adrienne Rich Copy Share
If I cling to circumstances I could feel not responsible. Only she who says she did not choose, is the loser in the end. — Adrienne Rich Copy Share
