#empowerment

Stop giving your life away to other people. ↗

— Steve Maraboli

#inspirational #life #self-empowerment #inspirational

I do not wish them [women] to have power over men; but over themselves. ↗

— Mary Wollstonecraft

#empowerment #equality #freedom #gender #independence

My own sex, I hope, will excuse me, if I treat them like rational creatures, instead of flattering their fascinating graces, and viewing them as if they were in a state of perpetual childhood, unable to stand alone. ↗

— Mary Wollstonecraft

#double-standards #empowerment #equality #feminism #flattery

In societies where men are truly confident of their own worth, women are not merely tolerated but valued." (From a speech read on video on August 31, 1995 before the NGO Forum on Women, Beijing, China) ↗

— Aung San Suu Kyi

#empowerment #equality #men #women #equality

I love man as my fellow; but his scepter, real, or usurped, extends not to me, unless the reason of an individual demands my homage; and even then the submission is to reason, and not to man. ↗

— Mary Wollstonecraft

#equality #freedom #gender #independence #men

The man or the woman in whom resides greater virtue is the higher; neither the loftiness nor the lowliness of a person lies in the body according to the sex, but in the perfection of conduct and virtues. ↗

— Christine de Pizan

#conduct #double-standards #empowerment #equality #gender

No: I shall not marry Samuel Fawthrop Wynne." "I ask why? I must have a reason. In all respects he is more than worthy of you." She stood on the hearth; she was pale as the white marble slab and cornice behind her; her eyes flashed large, dilated, unsmiling. "And I ask in what sense that young man is worthy of me? ↗

— Charlotte Brontë

#courtship #dignity #empowerment #equality #feminism

Yes, faith; it is my cousin's duty to make curtsy and say 'Father, as it please you.' But yet for all that, cousin, let him be a handsome fellow, or else make another curtsy and say 'Father, as it please me. ↗

— William Shakespeare

#courtship #dignity #empowerment #happiness #husbands

You wanna fly, you got to give up the shit that weighs you down. ↗

— Toni Morrison

#empowerment #flying #freedom #unburdening #weight

Literature for me… tries to heal the harm done by stories. (How much harm? Most of the atrocities of history have been created by stories, e.g., the Jews killed Jesus.) I follow Sartre that the freedom the author claims for herself must be shared with the reader. So that would mean that literature is stories that put themselves at the disposal of readers who want to heal themselves. Their healing power lies in their honesty, the freshness of their vision, the new and unexpected things they show, the increase in power and responsibility they give the reader. ↗

— Geoff Ryman

#freedom #freshness #healing #honesty #literature