61 Quotes by Laura Bates

This is a battle that we will win. Because women are wittier, brighter, stronger and braver than a misogynistic and patriarchal world has given us credit for.

As the acknowledged leader of the group by now, he threw out another challenge. In his most daring move, he insisted that in the group’s creative adaptation of the play they change the ending. In their version, with the title “To Revenge or Not to Revenge,” Hamlet should choose not to kill.

One of the cleverest and most insidious twists in the whole sorry tale is the way women are double bound by a gender-biased definition of professionalism and the threat of being labeled “whining.

Like war refugees, prisoners have lost everything: home, possessions, friends, and often family. For a prisoner, education has a special value as the one thing that no one can take from him.

O God, I could be bounded in a nut shell and count myself a king of infinite space, were it not that I have bad dreams. – Hamlet, act 2, scene 2.

When you look in the mirror and cringe as a result of your shame, it is conscience. When you look in the mirror and cringe as a result of how people think of you, it is ego. Which of the two is more prevalent in your life?

You really need to learn to take a compliment... And it wasn’t just men who took this view; is was women, too – telling me I was getting worked up about nothing, or being oversensitive...

The dangerous ghetto environment I grew up in did not scare me, but bridges, elevators, even cars did. A thunderstorm would have me running into the basement, and any insect would have me running out of the house. I walked the dark streets alone at night but could not sleep without the reassuring sound of a little black-and-white TV – to the chagrin of my sister, with whom I shared a bedroom.

The very fact that it is necessary in the twenty-first century to explain why it’s not okay to publicly debate whether or not women are “asking” for sexual assault is mind-boggling.