“Nothing is so necessary for a young man as the company of intelligent women.”
— Leo Tolstoy
We weren’t born distrusting and fearing ourselves. That was part of our taming. We were taught to believe that who we are in our natural state is bad and dangerous. They convinced us to be afraid of ourselves. So we do not honor our own bodies, curiosity, hunger, judgment, experience, or ambition. Instead, we lock away our true selves. Women who are best at this disappearing act earn the highest praise: She is so selfless. Can you imagine? The epitome of womanhood is to lose one’s self completely. That is the end goal of every patriarchal culture. Because a very effective way to control women is to convince women to control themselves.”
― Glennon Doyle, Untamed
“Patriarchy has no gender.”
― bell hooks, Teaching Critical Thinking: Practical Wisdom
“Emotional neglect lays the groundwork for the emotional numbing that helps boys feel better about being cut off. Eruptions of rage in boys are most often deemed normal, explained by the age-old justification for adolescent patriarchal misbehavior, “Boys will be boys.” Patriarchy both creates the rage in boys and then contains it for later use, making it a resource to exploit later on as boys become men. As a national product, this rage can be garnered to further imperialism, hatred and oppression of women and men globally. This rage is needed if boys are to become men willing to travel around the world to fight wars without ever demanding that other ways of solving conflict can be found.”
― bell hooks
“It is a tragedy beyond the power of language to convey when what has been imposed on women by force becomes a standard of freedom for women: and all the women say it is so.”
― Andrea Dworkin, Intercourse
“You have the freedom to choose, but you’re not free from the consequences of those choices.”
― Frank Sonnenberg, Listen to Your Conscience: That’s Why You Have One
“This fear of maleness that they inspire estranges men from every female in their lives to greater or lesser degrees, and men feel the loss. Ultimately, one of the emotional costs of allegiance to patriarchy is to be seen as unworthy of trust. If women and girls in patriarchal culture are taught to see every male, including the males with whom we are intimate, as potential rapists and murderers, then we cannot offer them our trust, and without trust there is no love.”
― bell hooks, The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity, and Love
“Everything you do today will impact your tomorrow.”
― Frank Sonnenberg, The Path to a Meaningful Life
“Our actions are guaranteed to affect others. Because we are not alone in this world, much of our learning about ourselves comes from our interaction with others.”
— Dr. Tae Yun Kim
“What you do has far greater impact than what you say.”
— Stephen Covey
“Actions have consequences. So does inaction.”
― Frank Sonnenberg, The Path to a Meaningful Life
“When culture is based on a dominator model, not only will it be violent, but it will frame all relationships as power struggles.”
― bell hooks, The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity, and Love
“When you don’t face the consequences, there are consequences for that, too.”
― Frank Sonnenberg, Listen to Your Conscience: That’s Why You Have One
“Young girls often feel strong, courageous, highly creative, and powerful until they begin to receive undermining sexist messages that encourage them to conform to conventional notions of femininity. To conform they have to give up power.”
― bell hooks, Communion: The Female Search for Love
“Every woman knows what I’m talking about. It’s the presumption that makes it hard, at times, for any woman in any field; that keeps women from speaking up and from being heard when they dare; that crushes young women into silence by indicating, the way harassment on the street does, that this is not their world. It trains us in self-doubt and self-limitation just as it exercises men’s unsupported overconfidence.”
― Rebecca Solnit
“It’s men who trust they will suffer no consequences for their actions, while women suffer no matter what they do.”
― Meghan MacLean Weir, The Book of Essie
“One does not like to be told that one is naturally the inferior of a little man”
― Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own
“With oppression, one group has the power to realize their choices and to name the world in order to change the world, while the other has these choices, these names, and this world imposed on them.”
― Bonnie Burstow, Radical Feminist Therapy: Working in the Context of Violence
“What would my body look and feel like if I didn’t have to mold it into both a shield and an ornament? How do I love a body that was never fully my own?”
― Vivek Shraya, I’m Afraid of Men.
“History is too much about wars; biography too much about great men.”
― Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own
“How else to make a dent in an object as immovable as patriarchy itself…?”
― Dalma Heyn, Drama Kings: The Men Who Drive Strong Women Crazy
“The attempt to escape from pain, is what creates more pain.”
― Gabor Maté
“Vulnerability is the birthplace of love, belonging, joy, courage, empathy, and creativity. It is the source of hope, empathy, accountability, and authenticity. If we want greater clarity in our purpose or deeper and more meaningful spiritual lives, vulnerability is the path.”
― Brené Brown, Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead
“Opinion is really the lowest form of human knowledge. It requires no accountability, no understanding. The highest form of knowledge… is empathy, for it requires us to suspend our egos and live in another’s world. It requires profound purpose larger than the self kind of understanding.”
― Bill Bullard
“No act of kindness, no matter how small, is ever wasted.”
— Aesop
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