Betty Friedan

"The crisis in a woman's life is not her body; it is her personality."

"Modern women must create a new life plan with herself as the heroine, not the supporting actress."

"A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle."

"Women must break through the limiting image that has been imposed on them."

"In the end, women are not going back."

"The housewife is an invention of the twentieth century."

"Fulfillment as a woman has only one definition left in America. Can the women who have never worked for pay define themselves at all?"

"Education is the process of becoming who you are meant to be."

"The way to break through the feminine mystique is through self-realization."

"We must somehow rescue those women still trapped in the mystique."

"A woman's body is not her sin; her refusal to acknowledge her full humanity is."

"Women have been seeking power through men; the time has come to seek power through themselves."

"The problem lay buried, unspoken, for many years."

"It is better to fail doing something worthwhile than to succeed at something meaningless."

"A woman is not born; she is made."

"The only real solution lies in a structured re-education of society."

"Women must learn to play the game, but on their own terms."

"Sexual relations under the feminine mystique are not relations between equals."

"Who can say what women can or cannot do until women themselves have tried?"

"The image of woman that emerges from this decade is not the image that will sustain women in the next."

"It is not possible for women to accept a concept of themselves that society has created."

"Women have been thought of as incubators; now they must think of themselves as full human beings."

"The problem with the feminine mystique is that it denies women their very humanity."

"A woman's responsibility to herself is her first responsibility."

"The future depends on women having the courage to embrace themselves fully."

"We are not born into the world yet passive and featureless; we are born into a world that has already decided what we should be."

"The education of women must prepare them for life, not just for motherhood."

"Women must refuse to be defined by their reproductive capacity."

"The real question is whether a woman can be a full human being and a wife and mother at the same time."

"A woman who accepts this limited image of herself will live a diminished life."