List of Betty Friedan Quotes

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.

It Was The Era That I Later Analyzed, The "feminine Mystique" Era, [when] "career Woman" Was A Dirty Word. And So I Didn't Want A Career Anymore. [but] I Had To Do Something. So I Started Freelancing For Women's Magazines.

When I Was In High School, Even In College, I Didn't Have Any Real Image Of A Career Woman Or A Professional Woman.

It Is Better For A Woman To Compete Impersonally In Society, As Men Do, Than To Compete For Dominance In Her Own Home With Her Husband, Compete With Her Neighbors For Empty Status, And So Smother Her Son That He Cannot Compete At All.

When [the] Life Span Of America Women Is Approaching Eighty Years Having Kids Is Not Going To Take It Up.

I Didn't Want To Be In A Situation Where I Was Broader Than The Boys, Which I Was, In The Academic World.

Women Today Have Choices And Demand Choices, Choices To Have Kids Or Not And The Reproductive Technology Thereto. And It Is A Fact [that] Most Women Continue To Chose To Have Children.

Having Expressed The Rage Against The Laws And Conditions That Oppressed Them - Maybe Even Excess Anger In The Beginning Was Directed At Men They Came In Contact With, Because It Had Been Pent Up Too Long - Women Now Come From A New Position Of Easier, More Comfortable Self-affirmation And Empowerment. Women Are Given To Tolerance And Are More Able To Love. I Hope It Happens Also To Men.

The Man Who Is Extremely And Dangerously Hungry Has No Other Interest But Food. Capacities Not Useful For The Satisfying Of Hunger Are Pushed Into The Background. 'but What Happens To Man's Desires When There Is Plenty Of Food And His Belly In Chronically Filled? At Once, Other (and Higher) Needs Emerge And These, Rather Than The Psychological Hungers, Dominate The Organism.

Chosen Motherhood Is The Real Liberation. The Choice To Have A Child Makes The Whole Experience Of Motherhood Different, And The Choice To Be Generative In Other Ways Can At Last Be Made, And Is Being Made By Many Women Now, Without Guilt.

If You Were Very Bright And You Became Head Of A Department, As I Did, Of The Psychology Department, You Were Encouraged To Go On To Graduate Work. But As A Women You Didn't Even Think About Discrimination.

I Would Have Much Rather Been In The Jalopy With The Kids, Going To Hunt's For Hamburgers. But, When I Entered High School, All My Friends Got Into Sororities And Fraternities And I Didn't.