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50+ Inspirational Betty Friedan Quotes on Feminism, Equality, and Human Potential

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While Betty Friedan is best known for her groundbreaking work "The Feminine Mystique," which played a crucial role in the feminist movement of the 1960s and 1970s, she has contributed numerous insightful quotes on various topics related to women's rights, equality, and societal expectations.

Here are 50 quotes attributed to Betty Friedan:

1. "The problem that has no name—which is simply the fact that American women are kept from growing to their full human capacities—is taking a far greater toll on the physical and mental health of our country than any known disease."

2. "Aging is not lost youth but a new stage of opportunity and strength."

3. "Men are not the enemy, but the fellow victims. The real enemy is women's denigration of themselves."

4. "The feminine mystique has succeeded in burying millions of American women alive."

5. "It is easier to live through someone else than to become complete yourself."

6. "No woman gets an orgasm from shining the kitchen floor."

7. "The only way for a woman, as for a man, to find herself, to know herself as a person, is by creative work of her own."

8. "Aging is not 'lost youth' but a new stage of opportunity and strength."

9. "I've yet to be on a campus where most women weren't worrying about some aspect of combining marriage, children, and a career. I've yet to find one where many men were worrying about the same thing."

10. "To see what has been in front of one's nose requires a constant struggle."

11. "It is better for a woman to compete impersonally in society, as men do, than to compete for dominance in her own home with her husband, compete with her neighbors for empty status, and so smother her son that he cannot compete at all."

12. "Men weren't really the enemy—they were fellow victims suffering from an outmoded masculine mystique that made them feel unnecessarily inadequate when there were no bears to kill."

13. "Women are the only exploited group in history to have been idealized into powerlessness."

14. "The feminine mystique says that the highest value and the only commitment for women is the fulfillment of their own femininity."

15. "The problem lay buried, unspoken, for many years in the minds of American women. It was a strange stirring, a sense of dissatisfaction, a yearning that women suffered in the middle of the twentieth century in the United States."

16. "The problem with no name. Today's suburban housewife is the most desperate housewife in the history of the world."

17. "I've often thought there is nothing sweeter to the mind of man than the applause of his fellows."

18. "The problem... was to find some simple way of diagnosing this condition in ourselves and our friends. I think I have found it."

19. "Aging is not 'lost youth' but a new stage of opportunity and strength."

20. "It is not possible for a woman to be honest and happy unless she is in a job for which she was really needed."

21. "You are not born a woman. You become one."

22. "Man is not the enemy here, but the fellow victim. The real enemy is women's denigration of themselves."

23. "The only way for a woman, as for a man, to find herself, to know herself as a person, is by creative work of her own."

24. "The problem that has no name—which is simply the fact that American women are kept from growing to their full human capacities—is taking a far greater toll on the physical and mental health of our country than any known disease."

25. "A woman is handicapped by her sex, and handicaps society, either by slavishly copying the pattern of man's advance in the professions, or by refusing to compete with man at all."

26. "The problem is not that today's kids don't read. The problem is what they read. We need to encourage young people to read the good books that teach them the best and worst about themselves, others, and the society in which they live."

27. "What Friedan gave to the world was, ‘the problem that has no name.’ She not only named it but dissected it. The concept of ‘the problem that has no name’ was a key to understanding that the housewife’s feeling of dissatisfaction was shared by countless other women."

28. "It is easier to live through someone else than to complete yourself. The freedom to lead and plan your own life is frightening if you have never faced it before. It is frightening when a woman finally realizes that there is no answer to the question 'who am I' except the voice inside herself."

29. "The feminine mystique has succeeded in burying millions of American women alive."

30. "The suburban housewife – she was the dream image of the young American women and the envy, it was said, of women all over the world. The American housewife – freed by science and labor-saving appliances from the drudgery, the dangers of childbirth, and the illnesses of her grandmother..."

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31. "I have never met a woman, or man, who stated emphatically, 'Yes, I have it all.' Because no matter what any of us has—and how grateful we are for what we have—no one has it all."

32. "Each suburban wife struggles with it alone. As she made the beds, shopped for groceries, matched slipcover material, ate peanut butter sandwiches with her children, chauffeured Cub Scouts and Brownies, lay beside her husband at night—she was afraid to ask even of herself the silent question—'Is this all?'"

33. "It is not until you become a mother that your judgment slowly turns to compassion and understanding."

34. "The only way for a woman, as for a man, to find herself, to know herself as a person, is by creative work of her own. There is no other way."

35. "The feminist revolution had to be fought because women quite simply were stopped at a state of evolution far short of their human capacities. Women were stopped as totally as if a wall were built down the middle of American society, preventing them from functioning in a human way."

36. "The women’s movement has not always followed a straight line. Rather, it has been a twisting, turning, sometimes forward, sometimes back, course."

37. "The older women are, the less difference it makes what they look like. It is all in their minds. If they have any sense at all, they cease to be women. They become producers of humanity, and they recognize it."

38. "I think that every woman who thinks that she knows what she wants in the world ought to get a job. If only to meet the enemy."

39. "Men have not been sharing equally with women the responsibilities or satisfactions of raising children. This failure, which has been basically a cultural, not an individual one, has grave implications for society and for the happiness of men and women."

40. "The problem is not women thinking about themselves. It is men thinking about women thinking about themselves."

41. "Work is the only thing that really makes women happy."

42. "It is an open question whether any behavior based on fear of eternal punishment can be regarded as ethical or should be regarded as merely cowardly."

43. "Some

 people think I’m saying, 'Women of the world unite—you have nothing to lose but your men.' It’s not true. You have nothing to lose but your vacuum cleaners."

44. "Man's discovery that his genitalia could serve as a weapon to generate fear must rank as one of the most important discoveries of prehistoric times, along with the use of fire, and the first crude stone axe."

45. "The function of education is to teach one to think intensively and to think critically. Intelligence plus character—that is the goal of true education."

46. "A girl should not expect special privileges because of her sex but neither should she 'adjust' to prejudice and discrimination."

47. "You don't develop courage by being happy in your relationships every day. You develop it by surviving difficult times and challenging adversity."

48. "It is not the unloved who initiate disaffection, but those who cannot love because they love only themselves."

49. "To be happy one must be free, to be free one must be brave."

50. "The first step in any revolution is to develop an ideology that will motivate people to unite and take action. The feminist revolution needed this ideology, this 'image,' to raise women’s consciousness."

❝Who knows what women can be when they are finally free to become themselves? Who knows what women's intelligence will contribute when it can be nourished without denying love?❞

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