Quote

life lived only for oneself does not truly satisfy men or women. There is a hunger in Americans today for larger purposes beyond the self. That is the reason for the religious revival and the new resonance of 'family.

Betty Friedan

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Betty Friedan
Age: 85 †
Born: 1921
Born: February 4
Died: 2006
Died: February 6
Feminist
Journalist
Psychologist
Sociologist
Writer
Peoria
Illinois
Betty Naomi Goldstein
Bettye Naomi Goldstein
Men
Religious
Selfishness
Life
Purpose
Larger
Family
Hunger
Doe
Oneself
Women
Lived
Resonance
Today
Americans
Revival
Reason
Truly
Satisfy
Self
Beyond
Purposes

More quotes by Betty Friedan

Image
You can have it all, just not all at the same time.
Betty Friedan
Image
Just as darkness is sometimes defined as the absence of light, so age is defined as the absence of youth.
Betty Friedan
Image
Regardless of your age, you will always have adventures, unexpected joys and unexpected sorrows.
Betty Friedan
Image
The situation of women and men is not comparable to worker-boss or black and white.
Betty Friedan
Image
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 had found true feminine fulfillment.
Betty Friedan
Image
No woman gets an orgasm from shining the kitchen floor.
Betty Friedan
Image
I just decided that I didn't want to be in the academic world, because it was [really] too easy for me at the top. But also it wasn't active enough for me.
Betty Friedan
Image
A woman has got to be able to say, and not feel guilty, 'Who am I, and what do I want out of life?' She mustn't feel selfish and neurotic if she wants goals of her own, outside of husband and children.
Betty Friedan
Image
Men, also, have in them enormous capacities that they have to repress and fear in themselves, living up to this obsolete and brutal man-eating, bear-killing, Ernest Hemingway, crewcut Prussian sadistic, napalm all the children in Vietnam, bang-bang you're dead, image of masculinity, the image of all powerful masculine superiority that is absolute.
Betty Friedan
Image
The feminist revolution had to be fought because women quite simply were stopped at a state of evolution far short of their human capacity.
Betty Friedan
Image
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.
Betty Friedan
Image
Who knows what women can be when they are finally free to become themselves?
Betty Friedan
Image
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?
Betty Friedan
Image
Diversity has got to be a part of modern feminism, and I think that my feminism is stronger because its an inclusive thing. I won't be backed into a corner that polarizes me against other women. And I wished they wouldn't be either.
Betty Friedan
Image
Certain signs, some of them visible to the layman as well as the scientist, indicate that we have been watching an ice age approach for some time without realizing what we are seeing... Scientists predict that it will cause great snows which the world has not seen since the last ice age thousands of years ago.
Betty Friedan
Image
He's a male chauvinistic piglet.
Betty Friedan
Image
By now, abortion should be obsolete. And I - and probably a lot of other feminists - wish it were obsolete, because abortion, in itself, is not a value - it is simply the right to chose, which is an essential value.
Betty Friedan
Image
I loved my kids. And I loved my house, and I loved a lot of things about my life in the 1950s. But there were a lot like me in that era, very overeducated housewives.
Betty Friedan
Image
When [the] life span of America women is approaching eighty years having kids is not going to take it up.
Betty Friedan
Image
Aging will create the music of the coming century.
Betty Friedan