I love who I am, and I encourage other people to love and embrace who they are. But it definitely wasn’t easy - it took me a while.

Serena Williams

I want to feel what I feel. What's mine. Even if it's not happiness, whatever that means. Because you're all you've got.

Toni Morrison

I know that I always wanted things. I was always proud of my people, proud of my home. But I always wanted more. I think most people do. Dolly Parton

I can shake off everything if I write; my sorrows disappear, my courage is reborn. But, and that is the greatest question, will I ever be able to write anything great, will I ever become a journalist or a writer? I hope so, oh, I hope so very much, for I can recapture everything when I write, my thoughts, my ideas and my fantasies. Anne Frank

I long to accomplish a great and noble task, but it is my chief duty to accomplish small tasks as if they were great and noble. Helen Keller

I cured myself of shyness when it finally occurred to me that people didn’t think about me half as much as I gave them credit for. The truth was, nobody gave a damn. …When I stopped being prisoner to what I worried was others’ opinions of me, I became more confident and free. Lucille Ball

I try not to focus on what people expect of me. Lady Gaga

I have chosen to no longer be apologetic for my femininity. And I want to be respected in all my femaleness. Because I deserve to be.

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

I feel safe in the midst of my enemies; for the truth is powerful and will prevail.

Sojourner Truth

I am no longer accepting the things I cannot change. I am changing the things I cannot accept. Angela Davis

I was really excited to get to shave my head - it's something I'd wanted to do for a while and now I had a good excuse. It was nice to shed that level of vanity for a girl. Natalie Portman

I don’t understand all the nuances of the women’s movement. But I do understand that there are feminists who want to challenge the dominant paradigm, not only of patriarchy, but of where the original wealth came from and the relationship of that wealth to other peoples and the earth. That is the only way that I think you can really get to the depth of the problem.

Winona LaDuke

I did not come to NASA to make history.

Sally Ride

I must fight with all my strength so that the little positive things that my health allows me to do might be pointed toward helping the revolution. The only real reason for living. Frida Kahlo

I have feared, at times, that my self-reliance, even more than my prominence, might prove hard for any man to take.

Sonia Sotomayor

I embrace the label of bad feminist because I am human. I am messy. I'm not trying to be an example. I am not trying to be perfect. I am not trying to say I have all the answers. I am not trying to say I'm right. I am just trying — trying to support what I believe in, trying to do some good in this world, trying to make some noise with my writing while also being myself… Roxane Gay

I was built this way for a reason, so I’m going to use it. Simone Biles

I think widespread, online displays of female self-confidence are good for people, especially men, to see. I just sometimes get the sneaking suspicion that corporations are co-opting “girl confidence” language to rally girls into buying body wash. Be careful. Mindy Kaling

I am interested in telling my particular truth as I have seen it. Gwendolyn Brooks

I am no bird; and no net ensnares me; I am a free human being with an independent will…

Charlotte Brontë

I think the foundation of everything in my life is wonder.

Alice Walker

I have made speeches urging women to adopt methods of rebellion such as have been adopted by men in every revolution.

Emmeline Pankhurst

I think it would be a far greater world if people were kinder and more respectful to each other.

Aretha Franklin

I believe in one day and someday and this perfect moment called Now.

Jacqueline Woodson

I shouldn’t even be here, so if I’m here I better do something good.

Tammy Duckworth

I have encountered riotous mobs and have been hung in effigy, but my motto is: Men's rights are nothing more. Women's rights are nothing less.

Susan B. Anthony

I had spent many years pursuing excellence, because that is what classical music is all about... Now it was dedicated to freedom, and that was far more important.

Nina Simone

I want to see how far I can train. I have to see how far my body will go.

Michelle Kwan

I may be a senior, but so what? I'm still hot.

Betty White

I believe Native Americans, women, and all of us deserve representation, and that we all need to fight with everything we have to make it so.

Deb Haaland

I have walked into the palaces of kings and queens and into the houses of presidents. And much more. But I could not walk into a hotel in America and get a cup of coffee, and that made me mad. And when I get mad, you know that I open my big mouth. And then look out, ‘cause when Josephine opens her mouth, they hear it all over the world. Josephine Baker

I want to taste and glory in each day, and never be afraid to experience pain; and never shut myself up in a numb core of nonfeeling, or stop questioning and criticizing life and take the easy way out. To learn and think: to think and live; to live and learn: this always, with new insight, new understanding, and new love.

Sylvia Plath

I like being unconventional.

Florence Griffith Joyner

I love a black wedding dress.

Vera Wang

I don’t think I could give advice to my younger self because she probably wouldn’t listen.

Annie Leibovitz

I think every woman should have a blowtorch.

Julia Child

I think that the same kind of openness and fluidity and willingness to interrogate power that we as feminists expect from men in alliance on questions of class should also be the expectation that women of colour can rely upon with our white feminist allies.

Kimberle Crenshaw

I am unapologetic about the need for social change, greater inclusion, and equity. I think it is important to speak your mind. Tolerance of the ignorance sends the wrong message to kids.

Marley Dias, age 13

I am still in progress, and I hope that I always will be.

Michelle Obama

I was steadily reaching in the dark across a chasm that separated who I was and who I thought I should be. Somewhere along the way, I grew weary of grasping at possible selves, just out of reach. So I put my arms down and wrapped them around me. I began healing by embracing myself through the foreboding darkness until the sunrise shone on my face. Eventually, I emerged, and surrendered to the brilliance, discovering truth, beauty, and peace that was already mine. Janet Mock

I am kneeling because I have to do something. Anything. We all do.

Megan Rapinoe

I was once afraid of people saying, "Who does she think she is?" Now I have the courage to stand and say, "This is who I am.”

Oprah Winfrey

I had to make my own living and my own opportunity! But I made it!

Madam C.J. Walker

I think the reason I was successful is that I was never cynical.

Carol Burnett

I have no dress except the one I wear every day. If you are going to be kind enough to give me one, please let it be practical and dark so that I can put it on afterwards to go to the laboratory.

Marie Curie

I read for pleasure and that is the moment I learn the most.

Margaret Atwood

I believe we need leaders who actually want to lead everyone.

Stacey Abrams

I have a passion for music, I love music. But I also have a passion for money and paying my bills.

Cardi B

I feel there is something unexplored about woman that only a woman can explore.

Georgia O’Keefe

I never loved reading until I feared I would lose it. One does not love breathing.

Harper Lee

I hate straight singing. I have to change a tune to my own way of doing it. That’s all I know.

Billie Holiday

I only know that learning to believe in the power of my own words has been the most freeing experience of my life. It has brought me the most light. And isn't that what a poem is? A lantern glowing in the dark.

Elizabeth Acevedo

I would fight for my liberty so long as my strength lasted, and if the time came for me to go, the Lord would let them take me. Harriet Tubman

I strike the ground with the soles of my feet and life rises up my legs, spreads up my skeleton, takes possession of me, drives away distress and sweetens my memory. The world trembles.

Isabel Allende

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

Malala Yousafzai

I just love bossy women. I could be around them all day. To me, bossy is not a pejorative term at all. It means somebody’s passionate and engaged and ambitious and doesn’t mind leading.

Amy Poehler

I wish, as well as everybody else, to be perfectly happy; but like everybody else, it must be in my own way. Jane Austen

I can’t help but believe that at some time in the not-too-distant future, there is going to be another movement to change these systemic conditions of poverty, injustice, and violence in people’s lives. That is where we’ve got to go, and it is going to be a struggle.

Coretta Scott King

I am a feminist. I’ve been female for a long time now. I’d be stupid not to be on my own side.

Maya Angelou

I only go to a movie if it satisfies three basic requirements. One, it has to have at least two women in it, who two, talk to each other about, three, something besides a man.

Alison Bechdel

I long to hear that you have declared an independency. And, by the way, in the new code of laws which I suppose it will be necessary for you to make, I desire you would remember the ladies and be more generous and favorable to them than your ancestors. Do not put such unlimited power into the hands of the husbands. Remember, all men would be tyrants if they could. If particular care and attention is not paid to the ladies, we are determined to foment a rebellion, and will not hold ourselves bound by any laws in which we have no voice or representation. Abigail Adams

I will not have my life narrowed down. I will not bow down to somebody else’s whim or to someone else’s ignorance.

bell hooks

I will not be ‘famous’, ‘great’. I will go on adventuring, changing, opening my mind and my eyes, refusing to be stamped and stereotyped. The thing is to free one’s self: to let it find its dimensions, not be impeded. Virginia Woolf

I never think of myself as an icon. What is in other peoples’ minds is not in my mind. I just do my thing.

Audrey Hepburn

I am not free while any woman is unfree, even when her shackles are very different from my own. And I am not free as long as any person of Color remains chained. Nor is any one of you.

Audre Lorde

I am stronger than fear.

Malala Yousafzai

I always have a comfortable feeling that nothing is impossible if one applies a certain amount of energy in the right direction.

Nellie Bly

I was attracted to science fiction because it was so wide open. I was able to do anything and there were no walls to hem you in and there was no human condition that you were stopped from examining. Octavia Butler

I am deliberate and afraid of nothing.

Audre Lorde

I also think it is important for women to help one another. I have a saying: There is a special place in hell for women who don’t.

Madeleine Albright

I had to face a lot coming through this journey, a lot of sacrifices, difficulties, challenges, and injuries.

Gabby Douglas

I choose to love this time for once with all my intelligence.

Adrienne Rich

I wonder whether we have decided to hide behind neutrality? It is safe, perhaps, but I am not sure it is always right to be safe.

Eleanor Roosevelt

I think empathy is really important, and I think only when our clever brain and our human heart work together in harmony can we achieve our full potential.

Jane Goodall

I am left without answers. There are only questions I must answer for myself. What is the balance between home and the road? Hearth and horizon? Between what is and what could be?

Gloria Steinem

I am one with infinite and need no other assurance.

Zora Neale Hurston

I am and always will be a catalyst for change.

Shirley Chisholm

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

I think self-awareness is probably the most important thing towards being a champion.

Billie Jean King

I ask no favor for my sex. All I ask of our brethren is that they take their feet off our necks.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg

I think women want freedom, they want to be empowered, they want hope, they want love, they want all the things that I want and I’m not afraid to say those things and act on them, and I think that’s why they identify with me. Women want to be fearless and sometimes all it takes is to see that it’s possible. Rihanna

I am experienced enough to do this. I am knowledgeable enough to do this. I am prepared enough to do this. I am mature enough to do this. I am brave enough to do this.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

I made my first film when I was 35, so I firmly believe that you don't have to be one thing in life. If you're doing something and you have a desire to do something different, give it a try.

Ava DuVernay

I chose to pursue a career in physics because there the truth isn’t so easily bent.

Angela Merkel

I am reclaiming my time.

Maxine Waters

I believed I was where I was supposed to be.

Katherine Johnson

i found god in myself & i loved her / i loved her fiercely

Ntozake Shange

I dwell in Possibility.

Emily Dickinson

I am different. I am an original. And like everyone else, I am here to take up space in the universe. I do so with pride.

Shonda Rhimes

I knew then and I know now that, when it comes to justice, there is no easy way to get it. You can’t sugarcoat it. You have to stand and say, “This is not right.”

And I did. Claudette Colvin

I would not creep along the coast but steer Out in mid-sea, by guidance of the stars. George Eliot

I believe that one of the most important things to learn in life is that you can make a difference in your community no matter who you are or where you live.

Rosalynn Carter

I love; therefore I am vulnerable.

Madeleine L’Engle

I was always looking outside myself for strength and confidence, but it comes from within. It is there all the time.

Anna Freud

I can’t tell my future, so I’m going to tell my past.

Ma Rainey

I will not be just a tourist in the world of images, just watching images passing by, which I cannot live in, make love to, possess as permanent sources of joy and ecstasy.

Anaïs Nin

I DISSENT.

RUTH BADER GINSBURG