The Women's March on Washington kicks off on Saturday, along with hundreds of sister marches around the globe. If you've still got to get ready for your local demonstration, I have 25 great book quotes for your Women's March signs.
Feel free to use the quotes below even if you haven't read the books they're from. This list also serves as your go-to source of feminist book recommendations in the age of Trump, so grab a quote that inspires you and buy the book for your nightstand after the march.
Please keep in mind that some of these quotes may be too long for your signs, even with my conservative edits. If you love a particular statement but can't figure out how to fit it on your pasteboard, feel free to get creative and trim it down. Just be sure to retain the essential message of the original. It would also be very nice if you attributed the quote back to its original source, regardless of whether you edited it or not.
Obviously, this list is in no way exhaustive. Read through my suggestions below, and be sure to share your favorite book quotes for your Women's March signs with me on Twitter!
1
"You may write me down in history / With your bitter, twisted lies, / You may trod me in the very dirt / But still, like dust, I’ll rise."
— from "Still I Rise" by Maya Angelou
2
"Don't let the bastards grind you down."
— from The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood
3
"Out of the ash / I rise with my red hair / And I eat men like air."
— from "Lady Lazarus" by Sylvia Plath
4
"I am no bird; and no net ensnares me: I am a free human being with an independent will."
— from Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë
5
"Value yourself for what the media doesn't."
— from Full Frontal Feminism by Jessica Valenti
6
"There are years that ask questions and years that answer."
— from Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston
7
"All oppression creates a state of war. And this is no exception."
— from The Second Sex by Simone de Beauvoir
8
"The soul of our politics is the commitment to ending domination."
— from Feminism Is for Everybody by bell hooks
9
"I do not wish [women] to have power over men; but over themselves."
— from A Vindication on the Rights of Woman by Mary Wollstonecraft
10
"Now at last I know why I was brought here and what I have to do."
— from Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys
11
"The history of men's opposition to women's emancipation is more interesting perhaps than the story of that emancipation itself."
— from A Room of One's Own by Virginia Woolf
12
"I don’t want to make somebody else. I want to make myself."
— from Sula by Toni Morisson
13
"[L]iberation will not happen unless individual women agree to be outcasts, eccentrics, perverts, and whatever the powers-that-be choose to call them."
— from The Female Eunuch by Germaine Greer
14
"I want to be respected in all of my femaleness because I deserve to be."
— from We Should All Be Feminists by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
15
"No wonder they invented the myth of female inadequacy."
— from Fear of Flying by Erica Jong
16
"Your silence will not protect you."
— from Sister Outsider by Audre Lorde
17
"A girl should not expect special privileges because of her sex, but neither should she 'adjust' to prejudice and discrimination."
— from The Feminine Mystique by Betty Friedan
18
"Complacency is a far more dangerous attitude than outrage."
— from The Dark of the Moon by Naomi Littlebear
19
"The hardest part has been learning how to take myself seriously when the entire world is constantly telling me that femininity is always inferior to masculinity."
— from Whipping Girl by Julia Serano
20
"When you can’t find someone to follow, you have to find a way to lead by example."
— from Bad Feminist by Roxane Gay
21
"I will have my serpent's tongue — my woman's voice, my sexual voice, my poet's voice."
— from Borderlands/La Frontera by Gloria E. Anzaldúa
22
"[The oppressor] fears he will have to change his life once he has seen himself in the bodies of the people he has called different."
— from Loving in the War Years by Cherríe L. Moraga
23
"There is no other organ quite like the uterus. If men had such an organ, they would brag about it. So should we."
— from Ina May's Guide to Childbirth by Ina May Gaskin
24
"We realize the importance of our voices only when we are silenced."
— from I Am Malala by Malala Yousafzai
25
"[S]urvival is insufficient."
— from Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel
