A woman today who has no goal, no...

A woman today who has no goal, no purpose, no ambition patterning her days into the future, making her stretch and grow beyond that small score of years in which her body can fill its biological function, is committing a kind of suicide.

- Betty Friedan

The Feminine Mystique

american-culture education feminism history politics social-science women

Other quotes by Betty Friedan

Woman's sexual problems are, in this sense, by-products of the suppression of her basic need to grow and fulfill her potentialities as a human being, potentialities which the mystique of feminine fulfillment ignores.

- Betty Friedan

The unpleasant image of the feminists today resembles less the feminists themselves than the image fostered by the interests who so bitterly opposed the vote for women...

- Betty Friedan

There is something less than fully human in those who have never known a commitment to an idea, who have never risked an exploration of the unknown, who have never attempted the kind of creativity of which men and women are potentially capable.

- Betty Friedan

No woman gets an orgasm from shining the kitchen floor.

- Betty Friedan

It is easier to live through someone else than to complete yourself. The freedom to lead and plan your own life is frightening if you have never faced it before. It is frightening when a woman finally realizes that there is no answer to the question 'who am I' except the voice inside herself.

- Betty Friedan

The only way for a woman, as for a man, to find herself, to know herself as a person, is by creative work of her own.

- Betty Friedan

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