Quotes From "My Life On The Road" By Gloria Steinem

If you find yourself drawn to an event against all...
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If you find yourself drawn to an event against all logic, go. The universe is telling you something. Gloria Steinem
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Thinking about our schooling in different decades and parts of the country, all three of us in that kitchen discover that we were taught more about ancient Greece and Rome than about the history of the land we live on. We learned about the pyramid builders of Egypt but not the pyramid builders of the Mississippi River. Gloria Steinem
Altogether, if I had to pick one place to hang...
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Altogether, if I had to pick one place to hang out anywhere, from New York to Cape Town and Australia to Hong Kong, a bookstore would be it. Gloria Steinem
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At first, feminists were assumed to be only discontented suburban housewives; then a small bunch of women's "libbers", bra burners, and radicals; then women on welfare; then briefcase carrying imitations of male executives; then unfulfilled women who forgot to have children; then women voters..that really could decide elections. That last was too dangerous, so suddenly we were told we were in a "postfeminist" age.. Gloria Steinem
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As Robin Morgan wrote so wisely, "Hate generalizes, love specifies". Thats what makes going on the road so important. It definitely specifies. Gloria Steinem
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I myself cried when I got angry, then became unable to explain why I was angry in the first place. Later I would discover this was endemic among female human beings. Anger is supposed to be "unfeminine" so we suppress it -until it overflows. I could see that not speaking up made my mother feel worse. This was my first hint of the truism that depression is anger turned inward; thus women are twice as likely to be depressed. My mother paid a high price for caring so much, yet being able to do so little about it. In this way, she led me toward am activist place where she herself could never go. . Gloria Steinem
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But why didn't you leave? Why didn't you take my sister and go to New York?" she would say it didn't matter, that she was lucky to have my sister and me. If I pressed hard enough, she would add, "If I'd left, you never would have been born." I never had the courage to say: But you would have been born instead. Gloria Steinem
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Women of all groups were measurably more likely than their male counterparts to vote for equality, health, and education, and against violence as a way of solving conflict. It wasn't about biology, but experience. Gloria Steinem
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There are really not many jobs that actually acquire a penis or a vagina, and all other occupations should be open to everyone. Gloria Steinem
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When people ask me why I still have hope and energy after all these years, I always say: Because I travel. Gloria Steinem
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Don't write when you're angry and under deadline, with time to test it only on friends who know what you mean, not on strangers who don't. Gloria Steinem
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My father did not have to trade dying alone for the joys of the road. My mother did not have to give up a journey of her own to have a home. Neither do I. Neither do you. Gloria Steinem
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As feminism has changed academia by enlarging what is taught, academia has sometimes changed feminism. Gloria Steinem
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Mrs. Greene made me understand the parallels between race and caste--- and how women's bodies were used to perpetuate both. Different prisons. Same key. Gloria Steinem
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The idea that women are 'our own worst enemies' forces us to admit that we don't have the power to be, even if we wanted too. Gloria Steinem
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Everyone has a home but me. Gloria Steinem
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I was angry because young men in politics were treated like rising stars and young women were treated like - well - young women. {...}I was angry about the human talent that was lost just because it was born into a female body, and the mediocrity that was rewarded because it was born into a male one. Gloria Steinem
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An older man who seems to be the leader of the Jesus Tshirt group says that the Bible forbids abortion in its commandment “Thou shall not kill.” But being in the Bible Belt, people really know their Bible, and an older woman cites Exodus 21:22—23, a passage that says a man who causes a pregnant woman to miscarry must pay a fine but is not charged with murder, not unless the woman herself dies. Thus the Bible is making clear, that a dependent life is not the same as an independent life. Gloria Steinem
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Father Egan continues to write about everything from the injustice of current wars to the past and future of Catholic mysticism. In the Catholic Reporter, he publishes an article titled "Celibacy, a Vague Old Cross on Priestly Backs", and explains that it started "only in 1139 when the church no longer wanted to be financially responsible for the children of priests. Gloria Steinem
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Women are always better liked if we sacrifice ourselves for something bigger - and something bigger always means including men, even though something bigger for men doesn't usually mean including women. Gloria Steinem
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In the same way that individual women are often underestimated, a movement of women is also understimated, but the truth is that, if people realize someone is willing to talk about these deep and daily concerns, they show up. Gloria Steinem
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I also noticed that humor was even more of a survival tactic here than in most women's groups. As one asked: What did Columbus call primitive? Answer: Equal women. Gloria Steinem
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I myself cried when I got angry, then became unable to explain why I was angry in the first place. Later I would discover this was endemic among female human beings. Anger is supposed to be "unfeminine", so we suppress it-until it overflows. Gloria Steinem
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It's time to leave. There is so much out there to do and say and listen to. I can go on the road, because I can come home. I come home, because I am free to leave. Gloria Steinem
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Despite all their faults, campaigns are based on the fact that every vote counts, and therefore every person counts. As freestanding societies, they are more open than academia, more idealistic than corporations, more unifying than religions, and more accessible than government itself. Gloria Steinem
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You should write about take no-shit women like me. Girls need to know they can break the rules" p.79 Gloria Steinem
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Sometimes I think the only real division into two is between people who divide everything into two and those who don't. Gloria Steinem
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Long before all these divisions were opened between home and the road, betweens a woman's place and a man's world, humans followed the crops, the seasons, traveling with their families, our companions, animals, our tents. We built campfires and moved from place to place. This way of traveling is still in our cellular memory. Living things have evolved as travelers, Even migrating birds know that nature doesn't demand a choice between nesting and flight. . Gloria Steinem
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Before she leaves, my new friend tells me to look out of the big picture window at the parking lot." See that purple Harley out there–that big gorgeous one? That's mine. I used to ride behind my husband, and never took the road on my own. Then after the kids were grown, I put my foot down. It was hard, but we finally got to be partners. Now he says he likes it better this way. He doesn't have to worry about his bike breaking down or getting a heart attach and totaling us both. I even put 'Ms.' on my license plate–and you should see my grandkids' faces when Grandma rides up on her purple Harley! "On my own again, I look out at the barren sand and tortured rocks of the Badlands, stretching for miles. I've walked there, and I know that, close up, the barren sand reveals layers of pale rose and beige and cream, and the rocks turn out to have intricate womblike openings. Even in the distant cliffs, caves of rescue appear. What seems to be one thing from a distance is very different close up. I tell you this story because it's the kind of lesson that can be learned only on the road. And also because I've come to believe that, inside, each of us has a purple motorcycle. We have only to discover it–and ride. . Gloria Steinem
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I myself cried when I got angry, then became unable to explain why I was angry in the first place. Later I would discover this was endemic among female human beings. Anger is supposed to be "unfeminine" so we suppress it -until it overflows. I could see that not speaking up made my mother feel worse. This was my first hint of the truism that depression is anger turned inward; thus women are twice as likely to be depressed. Gloria Steinem
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In Indian Country, ” he says, “we have a different sense of time. I’m learning and you’re learning–and more will. Gloria Steinem
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In our weeks of talk, movies and friendship, I watched as Wilma turned a medical ordeal into one more event in her life, but not its definition. I believe she was teaching me an intimate form of The Way. In her words: "Every day is a good day - because we are part of everything alive. Gloria Steinem
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I can go on the road - because I can come home. I come home - because I'm free to leave. Each way of being is more valued in the presence of the other. This balance between making camp and following the seasons is both very ancient and very new. We all need both. Gloria Steinem
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A journey - whether it's to the corner grocery or through life - is supposed to have a beginning, middle, and end, right? Well, the road is not like that at all. It's the very illogic and the juxtaposed differences of the road - combined with our search for meaning - that make travel so addictive. Gloria Steinem
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I could leave–because I could return. I could return–because I knew adventure lay just beyond an open door. Instead of either/or, I discovered a whole world of and. Gloria Steinem
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Each way of being is more valued in the presence of the other. This balance between making camp and following the seasons is both very ancient and very new. We all need both. Gloria Steinem
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Even migrating birds know that nature doesn't demand a choice between nesting and flight. Gloria Steinem
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Altogether, I can't imagine technology replacing bookstores completely, any more than movies about a country replace going there. Gloria Steinem
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Hate generalizes, love specifies Gloria Steinem
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Our grief is not a cry for war." That's how New Yorkers feel, " the driver said. "They know what bombing looks like, and they know the hell it is. But outside New York, people will feel guilty because they weren't here. They'll be yelling for revenge out of guilt and ignorance. Sure, we all want to catch the criminals, but only people who weren't in New York will want to bomb another country and repeat what happened here. Gloria Steinem
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In fact, caucus, a word derived from the Algonquin languages, better reflected the layers of talking circles and the goal of consensus that were at the heart of governance. Gloria Steinem
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After all, hope is a form of planning. Gloria Steinem
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It's important for someone who could play the game - and win - to say: 'the game isn't worth shit. Gloria Steinem
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I took a part-time editing job to pay the rent. It was work I could do at home, but when suddenly I was expected to spend two days a week in the office, I quit, bought an ice cream cone, and walked the sunny streets of Manhattan. Gloria Steinem
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To be just, a law has to be flexible. Gloria Steinem
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Taking away the good is even more lethal than pointing out the bad. Gloria Steinem
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For me, those weeks in Boston, with Wilma, became a lesson in her ability to be “of good mind, ” in her phrase, which also meant a people’s ability to survive. Gloria Steinem
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I sat at a lunch table with a professor of premonotheistic spirituality, plus several women from some of the tribes in this state that has more Native Americans than any other. All agreed that the paradigm of human organization had been the circle, not the pyramid or hierarchy–and it could be again. I’d never known there was a paradigm that linked instead of ranked. It was as if I’d been assuming opposition–and suddenly found myself in a welcoming world; like putting one’s foot down for a steep stair and discovering level ground. Still, when a Laguna law student from New Mexico complained that her courses didn’t cite the Iroquois Confederacy as the model for the U.S. Constitution–or explain that this still existing Confederacy was the oldest continuing democracy in the world– I thought she was being romantic. But I read about the Constitutional Convention and discovered that Benjamin Franklin had indeed cited the Iroquois Confederacy as a model. He was well aware of its success in unifying vast areas of the United States and Canada by bringing together Native nations for mutual decisions but also allowing autonomy in local ones. He hoped the Constitution could do the same for the thirteen states. That’s why he invited two Iroquois men to Philadelphia as advisers. Among their first questions was said to be: Where are the women? . Gloria Steinem
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Laughter is the only free emotion - the only one that can't be compelled. We can be made to fear. We can even be made to believe we're in love because, if we're kept dependent and isolated for long enough, we bond in order to survive. But laughter explodes like an aha! It comes when the punch line changes everything that has gone before, when two opposites collide and make a third and when we suddenly see a new reality..laughter is an orgasm of the mind. . Gloria Steinem
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In those meetings, I learned that even economic diagrams needn’t be linear. Ours was a nest of concentric circles, and an enterprise was measured by its value to each circle, from the individual and family to the community and environment. I realized that Rebecca and her colleagues were trying to do nothing less than transform the System of National Accounts, the statistical framework here and in most countries for measuring economic activity. For instance, the value of a tree depends on its estimated value or sale price, but if it is sold and cut down, there is no accounting on the debit side of the ledger for loss of oxygen, seeding of other trees, or value to the community or the environment. This group was inventing a new way of measuring profit and loss. By the end of our days together, I understood economics in a whole new way. A balance sheet really could be about balance. . Gloria Steinem