“A woman today who has no goal, no purpose, no ambition patterning her days into the future, making her stretch and grow… — Betty Friedan Copy Share Image
“There is something less than fully human in those who have never known a commitment to an idea, who have never risked… — Betty Friedan Copy Share Image
We need a new political movement of women and men toward a new society. — Betty Friedan Copy Share Image
The only kind of work which permits an able woman to realize her abilities fully, to achieve identity in society in a life plan that can encompass marriage and motherhood, is the kind that was forbidden by the feminine mystique, the lifelong commitment to an art or science, to politics or profession. If divorce has increased by one thousand percent,… — Betty Friedan Copy Share
“The unpleasant image of the feminists today resembles less the feminists themselves than the image fostered by the interests who so bitterly… — Betty Friedan Copy Share Image
It is perhaps beside the point to remark that bowling alleys and supermarkets have nursery facilities, while schools and colleges and scientific… — Betty Friedan Copy Share 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… — Betty Friedan Copy Share Image
It is easier to live life through someone else than to become complete yourself. — Betty Friedan Copy Share Image
This idea that the employment of women, the movement of women outside the home into the work world, and their demand for equality is… — Betty Friedan Copy Share Image
A good woman is one who loves passionately, has guts, seriousness and passionate convictions, takes responsibility, and shapes society. — Betty Friedan Copy Share Image
...women who 'adjust' as housewives, who grow up wanting to be 'just a housewife,' are in as much danger as the millions who walked… — Betty Friedan Copy Share Image
It is easier to live through someone else than to complete yourself. The freedom to lead and plan your own life is frightening if… — Betty Friedan Copy Share Image
Protectiveness has often muffled the sound of doors closing against women. — Betty Friedan Copy Share Image
“The problem is always being the children’s mommy, or the minister’s wife and never being myself.” — Betty Friedan Copy Share Image
“The problem lay buried, unspoken, for many years in the minds of American women. It was a strange stirring, a sense of dissatisfaction, a yearning that women suffered in the middle of the twentieth century in the United States. Each suburban wife struggled wit it alone. As she made the beds, shopped for groceries, matched slipcover material, ate peanut butter… — Betty Friedan Copy Share
The man who is extremely and dangerously hungry has no other interest but food. Capacities not useful for the satisfying of hunger are pushed… — Betty Friedan Copy Share Image
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… — Betty Friedan Copy Share Image
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… — Betty Friedan Copy Share Image