#omen

Organizations like the UN do a lot of good, but there are certain basic realities they never seem to grasp ...Maybe the most important truth that eludes these organizations is that it's insulting when outsiders come in and tell a traumatized people what it will take for them to heal. You cannot go to another country and make a plan for it. The cultural context is so different from what you know that you will not understand much of what you see. I would never come to the US and claim to understand what's going on, even in the African American culture. People who have lived through a terrible conflict may be hungry and desperate, but they are not stupid. They often have very good ideas about how peace can evolve, and they need to be asked. That includes women. Most especially women ... To outsiders like the UN, these soldiers were a problem to be managed. But they were our children. ↗

— Leymah Gbowee

#culture #liberia #outsiders #war #women

I am not an angel," I asserted; "and I will not be one till I die: I will be myself. ↗

— Charlotte Brontë

#empowerment #flaws #freedom #gender #ideal-woman

What [Sarah] Palin so beguilingly represented ... was a form of female power that was utterly digestible to those who had no intellectual or political use for actual women: feminism without the feminists. ↗

— Rebecca Traister

#feminism #feminists #politics #sarah-palin #women

If I follow the inclination of my nature, it is this: beggar-woman and single, far rather than queen and married. ↗

— Elizabeth I Tudor

#british-monarchy #british-royal-family #dignity #empowerment #freedom

A woman who surrenders her freedom need not surrender her dignity. ↗

— Wally Lamb

#truth #women #freedom

Here is the trap you are in.... And it's not my trap—I haven't trapped you. Because abortions are illegal, women who need and want them have no choice in the matter, and you—because you know how to perform them—have no choice, either. What has been violated here is your freedom of choice, and every woman's freedom of choice, too. If abortion was legal, a woman would have a choice—and so would you. You could feel free not to do it because someone else would. But the way it is, you're trapped. Women are trapped. Women are victims, and so are you. ↗

— John Irving

#freedom-of-choice #law #women #freedom

There are some people that you cannot change, you must either deal with them or leave them alone. ↗

— Cynthia Patterson

#change

The last words he said to me when I bade him good-night were: Tell Amy it's no good coming after me. Anyhow, I shall change my hotel, so she wouldn't be able to find me.' My own impression is that she's well rid of you,' I said. My dear fellow, I only hope you'll be able to make her see it. But women are very unintelligent. ↗

— W. Somerset Maugham

#women #change

Has there ever been a more revealing moment this year? Let me just put this in fairly simple terms: Al Jazeera now broadcasts the words of Senator Durbin to the Mideast, certainly putting our troops in greater danger. No more needs to be said about the motives of liberals. ↗

— Karl Rove

#al #been #broadcasts #certainly #danger

A Bachelor of Arts is one who makes love to a lot of women, and yet has the art to remain a bachelor. ↗

— Helen Rowland

#arts #bachelor #lot #love #makes