Life

These Quotes From Strong Women Will Remind You The Future Is Female

by Sarah Fielding

On August 26, we celebrate Women's Equality Day in America. If that sentence made you laugh out loud at how inaccurate the holiday is, then you've come to the right place. So what is the misleadingly titled Women's Equality Day anyways? The history of this holiday goes back to 1920 and the suffrage movement. While we celebrate the ratification of the 19th Amendment on August 18, Women's Equality Day celebrates the day the 19th Amendment was certified and women's right to vote was finally secured. In 1971, Congress designated the anniversary of certification as Women's Equality Day.

OK so now that the history lesson is over, let's get back to talking about all the inequality women still face. Currently we, as women, are facing an administration which looks at us solely as objects to gawk at and control rather than the intelligent, empowered women we are. If you're as fed up as I am, and it's hard to imagine you're not, allow Women's Equality Day to serve as a reminder that women do deserve to be equal — an obvious statement — and that we can't stop fighting until we are.

Get inspired by empowering quotes from some of the badass women who have given their all to remind the world that not only is the future female, but the past was too.

1. "What you do makes a difference, and you have to decide what kind of difference you want to make." - Jane Goodall

2. "The size of your dreams must always exceed your current capacity to achieve them. If your dreams do not scare you, they are not big enough." - Ellen Johnson Sirleaf

3. "We've chosen the path to equality, please don't let them turn us around." - Geraldine Ferraro

4. "A strong woman is a woman determined to do something others are determined not be done." - Marge Piercy

5. "You have just one life to live. It is yours. Own it, claim it, live it, do the best you can do it." - Hillary Clinton

6. "Instead of looking at the past, I put myself ahead twenty years and try to look at what I need to do now in order to get there." - Diana Ross

7. "A strong woman is a woman determined to do something others are determined not be done." - Marge Piercy

8. "Don’t compromise yourself. You are all you’ve got. There is no yesterday, no tomorrow, it’s all the same day." - Janis Joplin

9. "Never limit yourself because of others’ limited imagination; never limit others because of your own limited imagination." - Mae Jemison

10. "Above all, be the heroine of your life, not the victim." - Nora Ephron

11. "The first problem for all of us, men and women, is not to learn, but to unlearn." - Gloria Steinem

12. "I have stood on a mountain of no’s for one yes." - B. Smith

13. "Buckle up, and know that it’s going to be a tremendous amount of work, but embrace it." - Tory Burch

14. "If you don’t risk anything, you risk even more." - Erica Jong

15. "Everyone shines, given the right lighting." - Susan Cain

16. "The most effective way to do it, is to do it." - Amelia Earhart

17. "How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world." - Anne Frank

18. "You may have to fight a battle more than once to win it." - Margaret Thatcher

19. "We do not need magic to change the world, we carry all the power we need inside ourselves already: we have the power to imagine better." - J.K. Rowling

20. "Step out of the history that is holding you back. Step into the new story you are willing to create." - Oprah Winfrey

21. "You can waste your lives drawing lines. Or you can live your life crossing them." - Shonda Rhimes

22. "No one can make you feel inferior without your consent." - Eleanor Roosevelt

23. "I’m not afraid of storms, for I’m learning how to sail my ship." - Mary Louise Alcott

24. "The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don’t have any." - Alice Walker

25. "Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has." - Margaret Mead

26. "It took me quite a long time to develop a voice, and now that I have it, I am not going to be silent." - Madeleine Albright

27. "Courage is like a muscle. We strengthen it by use." - Ruth Gordon

28. "I think self-awareness is probably the most important thing toward being a champion." - Billie Jean King

29. "When the whole world is silent, even one voice becomes powerful." - Malala Yousafzai

30. "The difference between successful people and others is how long they spend time feeling sorry for themselves." - Barbara Corcoran

31. "Well-behaved women seldom make history." - Laurel Thatcher Ulrich

32. "If you think you’re too small to have an impact, try going to bed with a mosquito." - Anita Roddick

33. "For most of history, Anonymous was a woman." - Virginia Woolf

34. "I don’t want to get to the end of my life and find that I lived just the length of it. I want to have lived the width of it as well." - Diane Ackerman

35. "There are two ways of spreading light. To be the candle, or the mirror that reflects it." - Edith Wharton

Once you acknowledge the strength you have as a woman, you become deeply empowered and that is something no one, not even the current President of the United States, can take away.