186 Quotes by Betty Friedan

He’s a male chauvinistic piglet.

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.

The insult, the real reflection on our culture’s definition of the role of women, is that as a nation we only noticed something was wrong with women when we saw its effects on their sons.

Men weren’t really the enemy – they were fellow victims suffering from an outmoded masculine mystique that made them feel unnecessarily inadequate when there were no bears to kill.

There is absolutely no evidence that it is harmful to children if their mother’s health, well-being and autonomy and control of her own destiny is maximized by work outside the home.

Why the increasing emphasis by professional age experts and the media on – and public acceptance of – the nursing home as the locus of age when, in fact, more than ninety percent of those over sixty-five continue to live in the community?

Advice? I don’t offer advice. Not my business. Your life is what you make it.

I have discovered that there is a crucial difference between society’s image of old people and ‘us’ as we know and feel ourselves to be.

You can show more of the reality of yourself instead of hiding behind a mask for fear of revealing too much.