135 Women Empowerment Quotes That Highlight Progress

"There's something so special about a woman who dominates in a man's world. It takes a certain grace, strength, intelligence, fearlessness, and the nerve to never take no for an answer." - Rihanna

“That’s one of the things I have dysphoria around as a trans woman. ‘So what if I’m not a model?’ …But I was just like, ‘This is me. This is what I look like. This is who I love. This is who I fight for.’” - Raquel Willis

"It's important to teach our female youth that it's OK to say, 'Yes, I am good at this,' and you don't hold back.” - Simone Biles

“Think like a queen. A queen is not afraid to fail. Failure is another stepping stone to greatness.” - Oprah Winfrey

“No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.” - Eleanor Roosevelt

“The question isn’t who’s going to let me; it’s who is going to stop me.” - Ayn Rand

"I am not free while any woman is unfree, even when her shackles are very different from my own." - Audre Lorde

“I’ve been in so many spaces where I’m the first and only Black trans woman or trans woman period. I just want to work until there are fewer and fewer ‘first and only’s.” - Raquel Willis

"For I conclude that the enemy is not lipstick, but guilt itself; we deserve lipstick, if we want it, AND free speech; we deserve to be sexual AND serious—or whatever we please. We are entitled to wear cowboy boots to our own revolution." - Naomi Wolf

"Women's freedom is the sign of social freedom." - Rosa Luxemburg

“We teach girls to shrink themselves, to make themselves smaller. We say to girls, you can have ambition, but not too much. You should aim to be successful, but not too successful. Otherwise, you would threaten the man.” - Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

“I'm not going to limit myself just because people won't accept the fact that I can do something else.” - Dolly Parton

"Feminism is for everybody." - Bell Hooks

“If you want to run for Prime Minister, you can. If you don’t, that’s wonderful, too. Shave your armpits, don’t shave them, wear flats one day, heels the next. These things are so irrelevant and surface to what it is all really about, and I wish people wouldn’t get caught up in that. We want to empower women to do exactly what they want, to be true to themselves, and to have the opportunities to develop. Women should feel free.” - Emma Watson

“Never be ashamed of what you feel. You have the right to feel any emotion that you want, and to do what makes you happy. That’s my life motto.” - Demi Lovato

“My mission in life is not merely to survive, but to thrive; and to do so with some passion, some compassion, some humor, and some style.” - Maya Angelou

“Women will only have true equality when men share with them the responsibility of bringing up the next generation.” - Ruth Bader Ginsburg

“Hear me as a woman. /Have me as your sister. /On purpled battlefield breaking day, /So I might say our victory is just beginning, /See me as change, /Say I am movement, /That I am the year, /and I am the era /of the women.” - Amanda Gorman

"I raise up my voice — not so that I can shout, but so that those without a voice can be heard. We cannot all succeed when half of us are held back." - Malala Yousafzai

"Women are always saying, 'We can do anything that men can do.' But men should be saying, 'We can do anything that women can do.'" - Gloria Steinem