Skip to content

Feminism Quotes by Betty Friedan

50 Feminism quotes by Betty Friedan

All Feminism quotes Betty Friedan’s page

Betty Friedan says many women hide behind others’ expectations instead of finding their own path. She describes how the feminine mystique buries women’s ambitions, how fear of leading a life can make doors close, and why having a clear goal is essential for feeling fully human.

Rate this collection: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ No ratings yet

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

Image

The feminine mystique has succeeded in burying millions of American women alive.

Image

If I were a man, I would strenuously object to the assumption that women have any moral or spiritual superiority as a…

Image

To protest free speech in the name of protecting women is dangerous and wrong.

Image

Protectiveness has often muffled the sound of doors closing against women.

Image

[Feminist:] One who believes in the liberation of that which has been suppressed as female in a man.

Image

“Why should women accept this picture of a half-life, instead of a share in the whole of human destiny?”

Image

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

Image

Each woman is made to feel it is her own cross to bear if she can't be the perfect clone of the…

Image

“It is wrong to keep spelling out unnecessary choices that make women unconsciously resist either commitment or motherhood--and that hold back recognition…

Image

When one begins to think about it, America depends rather heavily on women's passive dependence, their femininity. Femininity, if one still wants…

Image

A woman is handicapped by her sex, and handicaps society, either by slavishly copying the pattern of man's advance in the professions,…

Image

Economic equity is an enormous empowerment of women. Having jobs that provide income means that women can be a more effective force,…

Image

The media and even, to some degree, leaders of women's organizations don't understand that the women's movement is an absolute part of…

Image

The glorification of the 'woman's role, then, seems to be in proportion to society's reluctance to treat women as complete human beings;…

Image

I think it's tremendously important that women continue to be full participants in the corporate environment, and that they continue to seek…

Image

The key to the trap is, of course, education. The feminine mystique has made higher education for women seem suspect, unnecessary and…

Image

“It is not possible to preserve one's identity by adjusting for any length of time to a frame of reference that is…

Image

“If one interprets 'penis envy' as other Freudian concepts have been reinterpreted, in the light of our new knowledge that what Freud…

Image

There's increasing consciousness that a "command and control" style of management which one associates with a male model isn't necessarily what works…

Image

There are some die-hard male chauvinist pigs and there are some Neanderthal women who are threatened by equality - but the great…

Image

The real joke that history played on American women is not the one that makes people snigger, with cheap Freudian sophistication, at…

Image

Feminism or the family? Carried to excess maybe. I have insisted that women cannot be defined solely in those terms. But for…

Image

It is easier to live through someone else than to complete yourself. The freedom to lead and plan your own life is…

Image

“What Friedan gave to the world was, "the problem that has no name." She not only named it but dissected it. The…

Image

“The feminine mystique, elevated by Freudian theory into a scientific religion, sounded a single, overprotective, life-restricting, future-denying note for women. Girls who…

Image

“We have gone on too long blaming or pitying the mothers who devour their children, who sow the seeds of progressive dehumanization,…

Image

“The insights, interpretations both of theory and fact, and the implicit values of this book are inevitably my own. But whether or…

Image

“It would be half-wrong to say it started with Sigmund Freud. It did not really start, in America, until the 1940s. And…

Image

The situation of women and men is not comparable to worker-boss or black and white.

Image

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

Image

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

Image

The only way for a woman, as for a man, to find herself, to know herself as a person, is by creative…

Image

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

Image

the new mystique is that women can have it all. There's a whole new generation of women today, flogging themselves to compete…

Image

“Woman's sexual problems are, in this sense, by-products of the suppression of her basic need to grow and fulfill her potentialities as…

Image

“A woman today who has no goal, no purpose, no ambition patterning her days into the future, making her stretch and grow…

Image

The problem that has no name-which is simply the fact that American women are kept from growing to their full human capacities-is…

Image

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

Image

Diversity has got to be a part of modern feminism, and I think that my feminism is stronger because its an inclusive…

Image

Other authors on Feminism

More by Betty Friedan

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

This idea that the employment of women, the movement of women outside the home into the work world, and their demand for equality is…

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

...women who 'adjust' as housewives, who grow up wanting to be 'just a housewife,' are in as much danger as the millions who walked…

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

It is easier to live through someone else than to complete yourself. The freedom to lead and plan your own life is frightening if…

Protectiveness has often muffled the sound of doors closing against women.

“The problem is always being the children’s mommy, or the minister’s wife and never being myself.”

“The problem lay buried, unspoken, for many years in the minds of American women. It was a strange stirring, a sense of dissatisfaction, a…

The man who is extremely and dangerously hungry has no other interest but food. Capacities not useful for the satisfying of hunger are pushed…

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…

If women’s role in life is limited solely to housewife/mother, it clearly ends when she can no longer bear more children and the children…

The feminine mystique has succeeded in burying millions of American women alive.

I can't point to any major episodes of sexual discrimination in my early life. But I was so aware of the crime, the shame…

“The feminine mystique, elevated by Freudian theory into a scientific religion, sounded a single, overprotective, life-restricting, future-denying note for women. Girls who grew up…