Inspirational Quotes

“How important it is for us to recognize and celebrate our heroes and she-roes!” 
Maya Angelou

“The world’s best mom,” her son Matthew said. This is what the editors chose to lead with, about a woman whose inventions made satellites possible.” 
Jessica Knoll, The Favorite Sister

Sometimes, men are just being curious and not rude.” 
Binati Sheth, ShhhARK WEEK

“Shouting about gender equality once a year doesn’t end the patriarchal and misogynistic stereotypes. We must live every day as women’s day, only then will there be actual, practical equality in this world.” 
Abhijit Naskar

“Maybe, in the unfathomable reaches of the male psyche, men have always been frightened of women – or at least frightened of the feminine qualities within themselves: those qualities that point inwards, to that place where our deepest feelings are lodged, but which centuries of masculine culture have repressed or removed.

Perhaps, this is the place where violence against women begins: in the shutting down of this inner world where relationships and connection truly reside, because the models we’ve been given for manhood fail to recognise a fundamental truth, which is that nothing meaningful in life ever happens without the ability to be vulnerable.” 
David Leser, Women, Men and the Whole Damn Thing

“We don’t need a patriarchal society, we don’t need a matriarchal society, we just need a human society.” 
Abhijit Naskar, Heart Force One: Need No Gun to Defend Society

“The word feminism has become synonymous with man-hating when in fact it has more to do with women than men.” 
Aysha Taryam, The Opposite of Indifference: A Collection of Commentaries

“We see the disparities in jobs and education among race and gender lines. Either you believe these disparities exist because you believe that people of color and women are less intelligent, less hard working, and less talented than white men, or you believe that there are systemic issues keeping women and people of color from being hired into jobs, promoted, paid a fair wage, and accepted into college.” 
Ijeoma Oluo, So You Want to Talk About Race

It is in vain to say human beings ought to be satisfied with tranquility: they must have action; and they will make it if they cannot find it. Millions are condemned to a stiller doom than mine, and millions are in silent revolt against their lot. Nobody knows how many rebellions besides political rebellions ferment in the masses of life which people earth. Women are supposed to be very calm generally: but women feel just as men feel; they need exercise for their faculties, and a field for their efforts, as much as their brothers do; they suffer from too rigid a restraint, to absolute a stagnation, precisely as men would suffer; and it is narrow-minded in their more privileged fellow-creatures to say that they ought to confine themselves to making puddings and knitting stockings, to playing on the piano and embroidering bags. It is thoughtless to condemn them, or laugh at them, if they seek to do more or learn more than custom has pronounced necessary for their sex.” Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre“We are accountable to the next generation. We have to give the next generation a world that inspires them – a place of gender and racial equality.” 
Avijeet Das

“Women were never absent from film history; they often simply weren’t documented as part of it because they did.”

Erin Hill, Never Done: A History of Women’s Work in Media Production

“A woman is human. She is not better, wiser, stronger, more intelligent, more creative, or more responsible than a man. Likewise, she is never less. Equality is a given. A woman is human.” 
Vera Nazarian, The Perpetual Calendar of Inspiration

“There is no such thing as a woman who doesn’t work. There is only a woman who isn’t paid for her work.” 
Caroline Criado-Perez, Invisible Women: Data Bias in a World Designed for Men

“…women were brought up to have only one set of manners. A woman was either a lady or she wasn’t, and we all know what the latter meant. Not even momentary lapses were allowed; there is no female equivalent of the boys-will-be-boys concept.” 
Judith Martin, Common Courtesy: In Which Miss Manners Solves the Problem That Baffled Mr. Jefferson

“There is no such thing as a woman who doesn’t work. There is only a woman who isn’t paid for her work.” 
Caroline Criado-Perez, Invisible Women: Data Bias in a World Designed for Men

“It is the horrific crime that seems to be accepted among many Arab societies, conveniently coined ‘honour killing.’ This must be the most contradictory term I have ever come across for what is honourable about cold-blooded murder? Just like the heinous crime the term itself is gravely flawed.” 
Aysha Taryam, The Opposite of Indifference: A Collection of Commentaries

“Disadvantages faced by indigenous peoples are related to dispossession and exacerbated by powerlessness and poverty.”  Roberto Mukaro Borrero

“Feminism is, of course, part of human rights in general–but to choose to use the vague expression “human rights” is to deny the specific and particular problem of gender. It would be a way of pretending that it was not women who have, for centuries, been excluded. It would be a way of denying that the problem of gender targets women. That the problem was not about being human, but specifically about being a female human.” 
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, We Should All Be Feminists

“Today…major actors and actresses develop their own projects or, at the very least, cherry-pick their roles carefully to suit not only their tastes but also whatever image they have cultivated to present to their public. Most major stars have their own production companies through which such projects are developed and even financed. While the biggest male stars of that time did in fact have their own production companies–Jimmy Stewart, Kirk Douglas, John Wayne, and Burt Lancaster, to name a few–and thus exerted creative and financial control over their careers, that was not the case with female stars. But Marilyn Monroe was about to change that.” 
J. Randy Taraborrelli, The Secret Life of Marilyn Monroe

“I’m willing to be seen.
I’m willing to speak up.
I’m willing to keep going.
I’m willing to listen to what others have to say.
I’m willing to go to bed each night at peace with myself.
I’m willing to be my biggest, bestest, most powerful self.” 
Emma Watson

“…women were brought up to have only one set of manners. A woman was either a lady or she wasn’t, and we all know what the latter meant. Not even momentary lapses were allowed; there is no female equivalent of the boys-will-be-boys concept.” 
Judith Martin, Common Courtesy: In Which Miss Manners Solves the Problem That Baffled Mr. Jefferson

“When the Majority of jokes made at the expense of trans people center on “men wearing dresses” or “men who want their penises cut off” that is not transphobia- it is trans-misogyny. When the majority of violence and sexual assaults omitted against trans people is directed at trans women, that is not transphobia- it is trans-misogyny.” 
Julia Serano, Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity

“Repression is a seamless garment; a society which is authoritarian in its social and sexual codes, which crushes its women beneath the intolerable burdens of honour and propriety, breeds repressions of other kinds as well.” 
Salman Rushdie, Shame

“I find it strange that practicing law in a comfortable well-heated office is considered too demanding an occupation for women, yet laboring from dawn’s first light in crowded, drafty, ill-lit sweatshops is not.” 
Shirley Tallman, Murder on Nob Hill

“We have broken through and taken our rightful role in society. But when I write the word ‘we’ I hesitate, because ‘we’ is all- encompassing. And that would not be fair to the thousands of women around the world who are still forced to dwell in the darkest of ages that we lucky ones have left behind.” 
Aysha Taryam, The Opposite of Indifference: A Collection of Commentaries

“Be fearless. Be tenacious. Go after what you want. Be a leader. Take control. Don’t like how things are managed? Change the status quo. Be a disruptor. Galvanize, inspire, lead, get results. Stand resolute in the face of critics, detractors, naysayers. Their no is your yes. Make a difference. Change the narrative. Be a monumental success and a paradigm for forward, sometimes unorthodox, always creative thinking. This is what makes you a trailblazer, a standard bearer and history maker!! Oh, unless you are a powerful, black woman (or simply a WOMAN) with a voice that moves the needle. Then, you are a troublemaker, angry, stupid, menopausal, looking for attention? Women don’t owe anyone an apology or explanation for being everything those part of an unevolved faction of society believes is only reserved for men. 
Liz Faublas, Million Dollar Pen, Ink.

‘We have a mother, and that mother is our territories, our common home of all the Indigenous peoples and everyone who inhabits this earth’. Maximiliano Ferrer, general secretary of the National Coordination of Indigenous Peoples of Panama

“To remain silent is to be complicit in the face of the increasing injustice, racism, xenophobia, and intolerance we are currently witnessing today.” 
Roberto Mukaro Borrero

“I am poor and naked, but I am the chief of the nation. We do not want riches, but we do want to train our children right. Riches would do us no good. We could not take them with us to the other world. We do not want riches. We want peace and love.”  Red Cloud, Makhpiya-luta

“The tape measures and weighing scales of the Victorian brain scientists have been supplanted by powerful neuroimaging technologies, but there is still a lesson to be learned from historical examples such as these. State-of-the-art brain scanners offer us unprecedented information about the structure and working of the brain. But don’t forget that, once, wrapping a tape measure around the head was considered modern and sophisticated, and it’s important not to fall into the same old traps. As we’ll see in later chapters, although certain popular commentators make it seem effortlessly easy, the sheer complexity of the brain makes interpreting and understanding the meaning of any sex differences we find in the brain a very difficult task. But the first, and perhaps surprising, issue in sex differences research is that of knowing which differences are real and which, like the intially promising cephalic index, are flukes or spurious.” 
Cordelia Fine, Delusions of Gender: How Our Minds, Society, and Neurosexism Create Difference

“It is hard to imagine that even today while many of us go about our lives freely, hundreds of women cannot fathom the concept of being free. Bound, gagged and suffocating from the cruel societal chains they fight for survival on a daily basis, some succumbing to it, others rebelling against it and paying for it with their lives.” 
Aysha Taryam, The Opposite of Indifference: A Collection of Commentaries

“I have a dream – that one day, black people won’t be black – white people won’t be white – brown people won’t be brown – gay people won’t be gay – straight people won’t be straight – women won’t be women – men won’t be men – the trans won’t be trans – believers won’t be believers and non-believers won’t be non-believers – instead, we all will be just human.” 
― Abhijit Naskar, Every Generation Needs Caretakers: The Gospel of Patriotism

“The best countries at closing the gender gap are the most peaceful. The best countries at closing the gender gap are the most prosperous. The most peaceful countries are the happiest. The most peaceful countries are best on the environment.” 
Laurie Levin, Call Me a Woman: On Our Way to Equality and Peace

“To borrow a metaphor from the kitchen sink… Children form strong opinions easily. They soak up information from their parents, school, and the media, and repeat it back to the world. So when you don’t look or act like what everyone has been told is the norm, you get proverbially barfed on a lot.” 
Liz Prince, Tomboy: A Graphic Memoir

“Women were never absent from film history; they often simply weren’t documented as part of it because they did “women’s work”, which was—by definition— insignificant, tedious, low status, and noncreative. In the golden age of Hollywood, women could be found in nearly every department of every studio, minding the details that might otherwise get in the way of more important, prestigious, or creative work (a.k.a. men’s work). 

If film historians consider the classical Hollywood era’s mode of production a system, we ought to consider women this system’s main-stay, because studios were built on their low-cost backs and scaled through their brush and keystrokes.” 
Erin Hill, Never Done: A History of Women’s Work in Media Production

“People like to think they’re open-minded, but if you toss a tired gender stereotype on their path they’ll run with it every time.” 
Karen M. McManus, One of Us Is Next

“Men and women are different. We have different hormones and different sexual organs and different biological abilities – women can have babies, men cannot. Men have more testosterone and are, in general, physically stronger than women. …So in a literal way, men rule the world. This made sense – a thousand years ago. Because human beings lived then in a world in which physical strength was the most important attribute for survival; the physically stronger person was more likely to lead. And men in general are physically stronger. (There are of course many exceptions.) Today, we live in a vastly different world. The person more qualified to lead is not the physically stronger person. It is the more intelligent, the more knowledgeable, the more creative, more innovative. And there are no hormones for those attributes. A man is as likely as a woman to be intelligent, innovative, creative. We have evolved. But our ideas of gender have not evolved very much.”   Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, We Should All Be Feminists

“It is the horrific crime that seems to be accepted among many Arab societies, conveniently coined ‘honour killing.’ This must be the most contradictory term I have ever come across for what is honourable about cold-blooded murder? Just like the heinous crime the term itself is gravely flawed.” 
Aysha Taryam, The Opposite of Indifference: A Collection of Commentaries

“Tragically, these witch hunts go unpunished because the law books in these countries do not view them as crimes. Basically, the law allows people to act as judge, jury and executioner and is prepared to cast a blind eye no matter how harsh their punishment might be.” 
Aysha Taryam, The Opposite of Indifference: A Collection of Commentaries

“This gendercide must be tackled by a revision of all laws. Killing is killing and placing the word ‘honour’ in front of it should never be justification enough for allowing its escalation.” 
Aysha Taryam, The Opposite of Indifference: A Collection of Commentaries

”When people are discussing as to what man and woman can do, always the same mistake is made. They think they show man at his best because he can fight, for instance, and undergo tremendous physical exertion, and this is pitted against the physical weakness and the non combating quality of woman. This is unjust. Woman is as courageous as man. Each is equally good in his or her way. What man can bring up a child with such patience, endurance, and love as the woman can? The one has developed the “power of doing”; the other, “the power of suffering”. If a woman can’t act, neither can man suffer. The whole universe is one of perfect balance.

When you are judging man and woman, judge them by the standard of their respective greatness. One can’t be in the other’s shoes. Then one has no right to say that the other is wicked.” 
Swami Vivekananda, Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda, 9 Vols.

“She was flabbergasted by the backward thinking of humankind. The damaging double standards that fueled gender disparity infuriated her.” 
Wiss Auguste, The Illusions of Hope

“The scrutiny on our bodies distracts us from what’s really going on here: control. The emphasis on our appearance distracts us from the real focus: power.” 
Alok Vaid-Menon, Beyond the Gender Binary

“Men and women are different. We have different hormones and different sexual organs and different biological abilities – women can have babies, men cannot. Men have more testosterone and are, in general, physically stronger than women. (…) So in a literal way, men rule the world. This made sense – a thousand years ago. Because human beings lived then in a world in which physical strength was the most important attribute for survival; the physically stronger person was more likely to lead. And men in general are physically stronger. (There are of course many exceptions.) Today, we live in a vastly different world. The person more qualified to lead is not the physically stronger person. It is the more intelligent, the more knowledgeable, the more creative, more innovative. And there are no hormones for those attributes. A man is as likely as a woman to be intelligent, innovative, creative. We have evolved. But our ideas of gender have not evolved very much.” 
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, We Should All Be Feminists

“How are you supposed to be believed about the harm that you experience when people don’t even believe that you exist? 

The assumption is that being a masculine man or a feminine woman is normal, and that being “us” is an accessory. Like if you remove our clothing, our makeup, and our pronouns, underneath the surface we are just men and women playing dress-up.”  Alok Vaid-Menon, Beyond the Gender Binary

“Every time we mention Gender Equality, merit is usually thrown out of the window. Your ability to deliver is not determined by what is in between the legs but by what is in between your ears.” 
Don Santo

“The truth is, that we are in a state of emergency. In the past few years, we have seen an onslaught of legislation… targeting gender non-conforming people…Our communities are under attack. Regardless of whether these pieces of legislation pass, the fact that they’re even being considered suggests just how disposable we are considered to be.” 
Alok Vaid-Menon, Beyond the Gender Binary

“At a fundamental level, we are still having to argue for the very ability to exist. The truth is, I still cannot go outside without being afraid for my safety. There are few spaces where I do not experience harassment for the way I look.”  Alok Vaid-Menon, Beyond the Gender Binary

“A lot more airtime is given to other people’s use of us, rather than our own experiences. Our existence is made into a matter of opinion, as if our genders are debatable and not just who we are. In other words, there’s been a lot of talk about us, but very little engagement with us.” 
Alok Vaid-Menon, Beyond the Gender Binary

“A society that doesn’t recognize and respect the girl power, grows with half pace and half power.” Amit Kalantri, Wealth of Words

“A society that does not respect women’s anger is one that does not respect women; not as human beings, thinkers, knowers, active participants, or citizens.” 
Soraya Chemaly,Rage Becomes Her: The Power of Women’s Anger

“Patriarchy preserves itself mainly by producing as many females as it can who believe that a wife or a mother is the second best thing a girl can become—the best being a married mother.” 
Mokokoma Mokhonoana

What is imperative for men is to become allies of women in their fight for equality!”  Avijeet Das 


“A tree has roots in the soil yet reaches to the sky. It tells us that in order to aspire we need to be grounded and that no matter how high we go it is from our roots that we draw sustenance. It is a reminder to all of us who have had success that we cannot forget where we came from. It signifies that no matter how powerful we become in government or how many awards we receive, our power and strength and our ability to reach our goals depend on the people, those whose work remain unseen, who are the soil out of which we grow, the shoulders on which we stand”  Wangari Maathai

“If a woman makes a unilateral decision to bring pregnancy to term, and the biological father does not, and cannot, share in this decision, he should not be liable for 21 years of support… autonomous women making independent decisions about their lives should not expect men to finance their choice.”  Karen Decrow

“To be a woman is to observe others observing you. To be a feminist is to intentionally rewrite what you have observed.”
Marquita Burke-De Jesus”