1. Coretta Scott King
“Hate is too great a burden to bear. It injures the hater more than it injures the hated.”
2. Audre Lorde
“When I dare to be powerful, to use my strength in the service of my vision, then it becomes less and less important whether I am afraid.”
3. bell hooks
“I will not have my life narrowed down. I will not bow down to somebody else’s whim or to someone else’s ignorance.”
4. Malala Yousafzai
“My mother always told me, ‘hide your face, people are looking at you.’ I would reply, ‘it does not matter; I am also looking at them.'”
5. Nawal El-Saadawi
“They said, ‘You are a savage and dangerous woman.’ I am speaking the truth. And the truth is savage and dangerous.”
6. Benazir Bhutto
“Military dictatorship is born from the power of the gun, and so it undermines the concept of the rule of law and gives birth to a culture of might, a culture of weapons, violence and intolerance.”
7. Frida Kahlo
“I must fight with all my strength so that the little positive things that my health allows me to do might be pointed toward helping the revolution. The only real reason for living.”
8. Indira Gandhi
“My father was a statesman, I am a political woman. My father was a saint. I am not.”
9. Margaret Sanger
“Woman must not accept; she must challenge. She must not be awed by that which has been built up around her; she must reverence that woman in her which struggles for expression.”
10. Aung San Suu Kyi
“Peace as a goal is an ideal which will not be contested, by any government or nation, not even the most belligerent.”
11. Cherrie Moraga
“The nationalism I seek is one that decolonizes the brown and female body as it decolonizes the brown and female earth.”
12. Marie Curie
“Nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood. Now is the time to understand more, so that we may fear less.”
13. Laverne Cox
“I think transwomen, and transpeople in general, show everyone that you can define what it means to be a man or a woman on your own terms. A lot of what feminism is about is moving outside of roles and moving outside of expectations of who and what you’re supposed to be to live a more authentic life.”
14. Mia Hamm
“I hope all you young girls see yourself up there…we were just like you.”
15. Amandla Stenberg
“Black female voices need to be uplifted within the mainstream feminist movement, especially at this time. It’s crucial.”