Feminists all across the globe are fighting for gender equality and championing female excellence every single day. These powerful women inspire us constantly with their words and with their actions, whether it's Michelle Obama speaking at the DNC or author Roxane Gay's feminist, groundbreaking works of literature (her Twitter feed is excellent, too).
From Laverne Cox to Ruth Bader Ginsberg, we've compiled some words of encouragement that will keep you fighting the good fight no matter what you're faced with.
1. "When you've worked hard, and done well, and walked through that doorway of opportunity, you do not slam it shut behind you. You reach back."
Michelle Obama, speaking at the DNC
2. “You must never behave as if your life belongs to a man. Do you hear me?...Your life belongs to you and you alone.”
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, from Half of a Yellow Sun
3. "When we stand for something, we’re unhinged. When we’re too good there’s something wrong with us. And if we get angry, we’re hysterical or irrational or just being crazy... So if they want to call you crazy? Fine. Show them what crazy can do.'
Serena Williams, speaking in a 2018 Nike advertisement
4. "This is what most girls are taught—that we should be slender and small. We should not take up space. We should be seen and not heard, and if we are seen, we should be pleasing to men, acceptable to society. And most women know this, that we are supposed to disappear, but it’s something that needs to be said, loudly, over and over again, so that we can resist surrendering to what is expected of us.”
Roxane Gay, from Hunger
5. “I am a person of color, working-class, born to a single mother, but I stand before you tonight an artist, an actress and a sister and a daughter, and I believe that it is important to name the multiple parts of my identity because I am not just one thing, and neither are you”
Laverne Cox, speaking to university students in 2015
6. "I identify more with who I feel myself to be than what I look like. Either way, am I obliged to entertain you with my appearance?"
Carrie Fisher
7. "Even if you find yourself standing alone, speak up. Even if people get mad at you, speak up. It's not our job to stay silent so that others can stay comfortable. Use your voice to shape the world or others will shape it for us."
Olivia Munn, in the wake of standing up to film bosses after they cast a registered sex offender in The Predator
8. “No black woman writer in this culture can write 'too much'. Indeed, no woman writer can write 'too much'...No woman has ever written enough.”
Bell hooks, from remembered rapture: the writer at work
9. "The idea that a woman can be as powerful as a man is something that our society can’t deal with. But I am as powerful as a man and it drives them crazy."
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, speaking to The New Yorker in 2019
10. “We are now a force, and you are nothing.”
Athlete Aly Raisman speaking to Larry Nassar, who was charged with sexually abusing her and multiple underage female athletes
11. “No struggle can ever succeed without women participating side by side with men. There are two powers in the world; one is the sword and the other is the pen. There is a third power stronger than both, that of women.”
Malala Yousafzai
12. "Women belong in all places where decisions are being made. It shouldn't be that women are the exception."
Ruth Bader Ginsberg
13. "What's interesting is that I hear a lot of people saying, when talking about girls‘ empowerment and women as well, you’ll often hear people saying, ‘You’re helping them find their voices', I fundamentally disagree with that. Women don’t need to find their voice. They need to feel empowered to use it and people need to be encouraged to listen."
Meghan Markle
14. "Each time a woman stands up for herself, without knowing it possibly, without claiming it, she stands up for all women."
Maya Angelou
15. "For too long, women have not been heard or believed if they dared to speak their truth to the power of those men. But their time is up. Their time is up. Their time is up."
Oprah Winfrey accepting the Cecil B. de Mille Award at the Golden Globes, 2018
16. “You want me to be a tragic backdrop so that you can appear to be illuminated, so that people can say ‘Wow, isn’t he so terribly brave to love a girl who is so obviously sad?’ You think I’ll be the dark sky so you can be the star? I’ll swallow you whole.”
Warsan Shire
17. “We are complete with or without a mate, with or without a child. We get to decide for ourselves what is beautiful when it comes to our bodies. That decision is ours and ours alone.”
Jennifer Aniston, in her personal essay for the Huffington Post about her choice to have children or not
18. "I grew up never seeing myself on-screen, and it’s really important to me to give people who look like me a chance to see themselves. I want to see myself as the hero of any story. I want to see myself save the world from the bomb."
Sandra Oh, speaking to Today in 2005
19. "Feminism is about giving women choice. It’s not a stick with which to beat other women with. It’s about freedom. It’s about liberation. It’s about equality. I really don’t know what my tits have to do with it."
Emma Watson, speaking to The Guardian in 2017
20. “Feminism has fought no wars. It has killed no opponents. It has set up no concentration camps, starved no enemies, practiced no cruelties. Its battles have been for education, for the vote, for better working conditions…for safety on the streets…for child care, for social welfare…for rape crisis centers, women’s refuges, reforms in the law. If someone says, 'Oh, I’m not a feminist,' I ask, 'Why, what’s your problem?'”
Dale Spender, from Man Made Language
