Remembering Gloria Steinem: A life in powerful quotes and witticisms

Gloria Steinem will be remembered as a hugely influential icon of America's feminist movement.

The internationally recognised journalist, author and feminist activist was one of the most famous voices of the US’ women’s movement. She dedicated her life to causes such as reproductive freedom, the legalisation of abortion, domestic violence prevention, equal rights and pay for women, as well as the fight for political gender equality.

Following thenews of her death at age 92, here are some of her most powerful, insightful and witty quotes.

Any woman who chooses to behave like a full human being should be warned that the armies of the status quo will treat her as something of a dirty joke. That’s their natural and first weapon. She will need her sisterhood.

A woman reading Playboy feels a little like a Jew reading a Nazi manual.

The future depends entirely on what each of us does every day; a movement is only people moving.

The first problem for all of us, men and women, is not to learn, but to unlearn.

A liberated woman is one who has sex before marriage and a job after.

A woman without a man is like a fish without a bicycle.

The truth will set you free, but first it will piss you off.

Pop culture shapes our ideas of what is normal and what our dreams can be and what our roles are. Politics, of course, decides how the power and the money in the country is distributed. Both are equally important, and each affects the other.

So what would happen if suddenly, magically, men could menstruate and women could not?… Street guys would invent slang (“He’s a three-pad man”) and “give fives” on the corner with some exchange like: “Man you lookin’ good!” “Yeah, man, I’m on the rag!”

If women are supposed to be less rational and more emotional at the beginning of our menstrual cycle when the female hormone is at its lowest level, then why isn't it logical to say that, in those few days, women behave the most like the way men behave all month long?

We’ll never solve the feminization of power until we solve the masculinity of wealth.

If Trump spoke well of me, I would shoot myself.

Now we know that, say, women can do what men can do - most folks would agree with that. But we don’t know that men could do what women can do.

Empathy is the most radical of human emotions.

RIP Gloria Steinem 1934 - 2026