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181 " Voting isn't the most we can do, but the least. To have a democracy, you have to want one. "
― Gloria Steinem , My Life on the Road
182 " Voting isn't the most we can do, but it is the least. "
183 " According to the wisdom of Indian Country on my own continent, it takes four generations to heal one act of violence. What "
184 " 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. "
185 " If you travel long enough, every story becomes a novel. "
186 " Feminism is memory. "
187 " And I was angry because the media took racism seriously - or pretended to - but with sexism, they rarely bothered even to pretend. "
188 " the most reliable predictor of whether a country is violent within itself—or will use military violence against another country—is not poverty, natural resources, religion, or even degree of democracy; it’s violence against females. It normalizes all other violence. "
189 " Close your eyes and pretend you are living with a woman—how would you divide the housework? "
190 " In most societies, a woman is encouraged to give birth to another person more than she is encouraged to give birth to herself. "
― Gloria Steinem ,
191 " More reliably than anything else on earth, the road will force you to live in the present. "
192 " There are black doctors and doctors and women novelists and novelists. Any less powerful group gets the adjective, while the powerful group takes the noun. The less powerful group usually knows the more powerful one much better than vice versa. People of color have to understand white people in order to survive; women have had to know men. Only the powerful group can afford to regard the less powerful one as a mystery. "
193 " That's why, if I had to name the most important discovery of my life, it would be the portable community of talking circles; groups that gather with all five senses, and allow for consciousness to change. "
194 " I finally understood why laughter is a mark of wanderers, from the holy fools of Old Russia to the roadies of rock music. It’s the surprise, the unexpected, the out of control. It turns out that 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, when we suddenly see a new reality. "
195 " We must not only vote but fight to vote. The voting booth really is the one place on earth where the least powerful equal the powerful. p176 "
196 " There is no such thing as a perfect leader. We have to learn to lead ourselves. "
― Gloria Steinem
197 " This balance between tribe and individuality, community and uniqueness, was a surprise in a world that makes us think we have to make a choice between them. "
198 " In truth, we don't know which of our acts in the present will shape the future. But we have to behave as if everything we do matters. Because it might. "
199 " So I talk about original cultures that saw the presence of god in all living things- including women. Only in the last five hundred to five thousand years- depending on where we live in the world- has godliness been withdrawn from particular races of men, all in order to allow the conquering of nature, females, and certain races of men. Though patriarchal cultures and religions have made hierarchy seem inevitable, humans for 95 percent of history have been more likely to see the circle as our natural paradigm. "
200 " Laughter is an orgasm of the mind. "