#women

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

By believing in our nobler nature, women have the amazing power to inspire us to live up to it. This is one reason why men tend to fear commitment. ↗

— Neil Strauss

#gender-stereotypes #love #men-and-women #power #relationships

Knowledge is power. It is my hope that as we continue to do what women do best-network, guide, and provide support for each other-POP will soon become common knowledge. ↗

— Sherrie J. Palm

#inspirational

No one can help us as much as we can help ourselves. ↗

— Sherrie J. Palm

#women-s-inspirational #inspirational

We gotta start teaching our daughters to be somebodies instead of somebody's. ↗

— Kifah Shah

#daughters #empowering #inspirational #mothers #women

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