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At my age, in this still hierarchical time, people often ask me if I’m “passing the torch.” I explain that I’m keeping my torch, thank you very much-and I’m using it to light the torches of others.

Gloria Steinem

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Gloria Steinem
Age: 90
Born: 1934
Born: March 25
Activist
Actor
Editor
Essayist
Feminist
Human Rights Activist
Journalist
Lecturer
Reporter
Writer
Toledo
Ohio
Gloria Marie Steinem
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Passing
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More quotes by Gloria Steinem

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No wonder male religious leaders so often say that humans were born in sin—because we were born to female creatures. Only by obeying the rules of the patriarchy can we be reborn through men. No wonder priests and ministers in skirts sprinkle imitation birth fluid over our heads, give us new names, and promise rebirth into everlasting life.
Gloria Steinem
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... anything a powerful group has is perceived as good, no matter what it is, and anything a less powerful group has is not so good, no matter how intrinsically great it might be.
Gloria Steinem
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For women... bras, panties, bathing suits, and other stereotypical gear are visual reminders of a commercial, idealized feminine image that our real and diverse female bodies can't possibly fit. Without these visual references, each individual woman's body demands to be accepted on its own terms. We stop being comparatives. We begin to be unique.
Gloria Steinem
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This is the wisdom: If we bless our bodies, they will bless us.
Gloria Steinem
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I think it's important to see the parallels, and to understand that our masculine and feminine roles are relatively new in human history. Both gender and race are inventions that go deep because we have been raised with them, but they are still inventions.
Gloria Steinem
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Overthrowing capitalism is too small for us. We must overthrow the whole...patriarch!
Gloria Steinem
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Racism is not real, it's made up, it's cruel, it can be stopped.
Gloria Steinem
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One of our biggest problems in terms of effectiveness is that we have hopes, but our opposition has interests. We measure everything against our hopes, including politicians that we are voting for or choosing amongst. We don't measure up to our hopes ourselves.
Gloria Steinem
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Most women are one man away from welfare.
Gloria Steinem
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I was not considered beautiful before I was a feminist. I was a pretty girl before, but suddenly, after I was publicly identified as a feminist, I was beautiful. So, many people were really commenting on what they thought feminists looked like.
Gloria Steinem
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Transformation happens in small groups. Each person can speak and all listen.
Gloria Steinem
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I am terminally sentimental about graduations. They are more individual than weddings, more conscious than christenings, or bar mitzvahs or bat mitzvahs. They are almost as much a step into the unknown as funerals-though I assure you, there is life after graduation.
Gloria Steinem
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change starts at the bottom. I think we're disempowered by the idea that it starts at the top, when really change is like a tree. It does start at the bottom.
Gloria Steinem
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More and more men are raising children or want to be close to their kids. They don't want to just lead work-obsessed lives and end up 50 years later with an engraved watch.
Gloria Steinem
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A woman reading Playboy feels a little like a Jew reading a Nazi manual.
Gloria Steinem
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A lot of my generation are living out the un-lived lives of our mothers.
Gloria Steinem
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Life after 50 or 60 is itself another country, as different as adolescence is from childhood, or as adulthood is from adolescence - and just as adventurous.
Gloria Steinem
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If you let Barnum & Bailey interpret a plot by Stendahl, it might come out to be something like the 1972 Democratic convention.
Gloria Steinem
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I've finally figured out why soap operas are, and logically should be, so popular with generations of housebound women. They are the only place in our culture where grown-up men take seriously all the things that grown-up women have to deal with all day long.
Gloria Steinem
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The most impersonal seeming audiences eventually just say such intimate, smart, wise, amazing, totally surprising, funny things. It's empowering, in the sense of feeling like you're a part of something really important.
Gloria Steinem