749 Quotes by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

We say to girls: You can have ambition, but not too much. You should aim to be successful but not too successful, otherwise you will threaten the man. If you are the breadwinner in your relationship with a man, pretend that you are not, especially in public, otherwise you will emasculate him.

Many girls think of the 'feelings' of those who are hurting them. This is the catastrophic consequence of likeability. We have a world full of women who are unable to exhale fully because they have for so long been conditioned to fold themselves into shapes to make themselves likeable.

why should a woman's success be a threat to a man?

culture doesn't make people, people make culture.

Why does it have to be you as a woman? Why not you as a human being?" This type of question is a way of silencing a person's specific experiences. Of course I am a human being, but there are particular things that happen to me in the world because I am a woman. This same man, by the way, would often talk about his experience as a black man. (To which I should probably have responded: Why not your experiences as a man or as a human being? Why a black man?)

It is one thing to know something intellectually and quite another to feel it emotionally

If we do something over and over again, it becomes normal. If we see the same thing over and over again, it becomes normal... If we keep seeing only men as heads of corporations, it starts to seem "natural" that only men should be heads of corporations.

There must be more than male benevolence as the basis for a women’s well-being.

The value we give to "Mrs." means that marriage changes the social status of a woman bur not that of a man.