In this day and age, we are finally moving closer to achieving more equal positions for every person on Earth. Of course, some places still need to catch up, but the world is finally moving in the right direction. The sole existence of women empowerment quotes proves just that. Not only by women but by men too, the inspiring sayings on this list perfectly capture the power needed to go through life.
These positive quotes about women's empowerment come from women like Michelle Obama, J.K. Rowling, Serena Williams, and many more people who have made their mark. Every word on this list carries an enormous meaning and power. So no matter what gender you are, these quotes about women’s struggles, achievements, and the wisdom that came along will surely inspire anyone anywhere, as well as shed some light on how the world is developing.
Not everything must be silly jokes, even though there are some great memes for women out there. There are also times when you need to take a minute and get serious, to fully appreciate how people overcome their hardships.
So if you are seeking empowering quotes for women, this is the place to be. Scroll through, and take a few seconds to understand the meaning behind these self-loving words. Vote for your favorites, and don’t forget to share them with your friends and family!
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"Feminism isn't about making women stronger. Women are already strong, it's about changing the way the world perceives that strength." - G.D. Anderson
"I am a woman with thoughts and questions and s**t to say. I say if I'm beautiful. I say if I'm strong. You will not determine my story—I will." - Amy Schumer
“The thing women have yet to learn is nobody gives you power. You just take it.” - Roseanne Barr
“Every woman’s success should be an inspiration to another. We’re strongest when we cheer each other on.” - Serena Williams
"In the future, there will be no female leaders. There will just be leaders." - Sheryl Sandberg
"I'm tough, ambitious, and I know exactly what I want. If that makes me a b*tch, okay." - Madonna
"Women belong in all places where decisions are being made. It shouldn't be that women are the exception." - Ruth Bader Ginsburg
“You educate a man; you educate a man. You educate a woman; you educate a generation.” - Brigham Young
“The data is clear: If you give a woman an opportunity, she will make a huge difference.” - Carly Fiorina
“I myself have never been able to find out precisely what feminism is: I only know that people call me a feminist whenever I express sentiments that differentiate me from a doormat.” - Rebecca West
“We do not need magic to transform our world. We carry all of the power we need inside ourselves already.” - J.K. Rowling
“I want to build a community where women of all races can communicate and... Continue to support and take care of each other. I want to give women a space to feel their own strength and tell their stories. That is power.” - Beyoncé
"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
"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
“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
“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
“Men often ask me, 'Why are your female characters so paranoid?' It’s not paranoia. It’s recognition of their situation.” - Margaret Atwood
“My movement is my movement. When all the dust has settled on the groundbreaking-ness, I’m going to still be doing this. I’m not going to suddenly change. I’m going to still be telling my life story through music. And if that’s body-positive to you, amen. If that’s feminist to you, amen. If that’s pro-black to you, amen. Because ma’am, I’m all of those things.” - Lizzo
"Women’s speech—and the fact that we are now listening to it—has enraged men in a way that makes them determined to reestablish the longstanding hierarchy of power in America. ...And yet this awful truth will not stop women from speaking, and I do not think that it will turn a movement into a moment. It has become clear that there is not nearly enough left to lose." - Jia Tolentino
“I am a woman and a warrior. If you think I can't be both, you've been lied to.” - Jennifer Zeynab Joukhadar
"To all the little girls who are watching this, never doubt that you are valuable and powerful, and deserving of every chance and opportunity in the world to pursue and achieve your own dreams." - Hillary Clinton
“You could certainly say that I’ve never underestimated myself. There’s nothing wrong with being ambitious.” - Angela Merkel
“Let a woman have her place because as you provide the foundation for her, she provides a foundation for you. And through that vulnerability comes strength.” - Shemar Moore
“They'll tell you you're too loud, that you need to wait your turn and ask the right people for permission. Do it anyway.” - Alexandria Ocasio Cortez
"You don't have to be pretty. You don't owe prettiness to anyone. Not to your boyfriend/spouse/partner, not to your co-workers, especially not to random men on the street. You don't owe it to your mother, you don't owe it to your children, you don't owe it to civilization in general. Prettiness is not a rent you pay for occupying a space marked 'female.'" - Erin McKean
“I can promise you that women working together – linked, informed, and educated – can bring peace and prosperity to this forsaken planet.” - Isabelle Allende
"I always wanted to be a femme fatale. Even when I was a young girl, I never really wanted to be a girl. I wanted to be a woman." - Diane von Furstenberg
"We need women at all levels, including the top, to change the dynamic, reshape the conversation, to make sure women's voices are heard and heeded, not overlooked and ignored." - Sheryl Sandberg
"Whether I am meant to or not, I challenge assumptions about women. I do make some people uncomfortable, which I'm well aware of, but that's just part of coming to grips with what I believe is still one of the most important pieces of unfinished business in human history—empowering women to be able to stand up for themselves." - Hillary Clinton
"We need to reshape our own perception of how we view ourselves. We have to step up as women and take the lead." - Beyoncé
"No woman should be told she can't make decisions about her own body. When women's rights are under attack, we fight back." - Kamala Harris
"They cannot stand that a refugee, a black woman, an immigrant, a Muslim, shows up in Congress thinking she's equal to them. But I say to them, 'How else did you expect me to show up?'" - Ilhan Omar
"In my opinion, the most exciting potential of women of color formations resides in the possibility of politicizing this identity—basing the identity on politics rather than the politics on identity." - Angela Davis
“I don’t think about beauty. I wake up and I want to be a smarter person, that’s my focus. I’m encouraging certainly my girls that if they can make their inside and who they are really, really stunning then everything falls together.” - Angelina Jolie
"Women, if the soul of the nation is to be saved, I believe you must become its soul." - Coretta Scott King
"Black women have had to develop a larger vision of our society than perhaps any other group. They have had to understand white men, white women, and black men. And they have had to understand themselves. When black women win victories, it is a boost for virtually every segment of society." - Angela Davis
“I embrace the label of bad feminist because I am human. I am messy. I’m not trying to be an example. I am not trying to be perfect. I am not trying to say I have all the answers. I am not trying to say I’m right. I am just trying—trying to support what I believe in, trying to do some good in this world, trying to make some noise with my writing while also being myself." - Roxane Gay
“Fearlessness is like a muscle. I know from my own life that the more I exercise it the more natural it becomes to not let my fears run me.” - Arianna Huffington
“I always did something I was a little not ready to do. I think that’s how you grow. When there’s that moment of ‘Wow, I’m not really sure I can do this,’ and you push through those moments, that’s when you have a breakthrough.” - Marissa Mayer
“No one ever became a success without taking chances… One must be able to recognize the moment and seize it without delay.” - Estée Lauder
“Women have to harness their power—it’s absolutely true. It’s just learning not to take the first no. And if you can’t go straight ahead, you go around the corner.” - Cher
“I have learned that as long as I hold fast to my beliefs and values – and follow my own moral compass – then the only expectations I need to live up to are my own.” - Michelle Obama
“With each generation, women’s ability to live the lives they choose reaches a place their grandmothers never thought possible. But that doesn’t mean everything is perfect or that our work is finished.” - Cathy McMorris Rodgers
“Success, they taught me, is built on the foundation of courage, hard work, and individual responsibility. Despite what some would have us believe, success is not built on resentment and fears.” - Susana Martinez
“I think that passion is the secret ingredient that drives hard work and excellence.” - Kelly Ayotte
“And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.” - Anaïs Nin
“You may not control all the events that happen to you, but you can decide not to be reduced by them.” - Maya Angelou
“Like art, revolutions come from combining what exists into what has never existed before.” - Gloria Steinem
“Without leaps of imagination or dreaming, we lose the excitement of possibilities. Dreaming, after all, is a form of planning.” - Gloria Steinem
“Each time a woman stands up for herself, without knowing it possibly, without claiming it, she stands up for all women.” - Maya Angelou
“Our Matru Shakti is our pride. Women empowerment is very crucial to our development.” - Narendra Modi
“We need women who are so strong they can be gentle, so educated they can be humble, so fierce they can be compassionate, so passionate they can be rational, and so disciplined they can be free.” - Kavita N. Ramdas
“One of the things about equality is not just that you be treated equally to a man, but that you treat yourself equally to the way you treat a man.” - Marlo Thomas
“When it comes time to settle down, find someone who wants an equal partner. Someone who thinks women should be smart, opinionated, and ambitious.” - Sheryl Sandberg
“Wouldn’t it be nice if Black girls weren’t inundated with negative, sexist comments about Black women? If they were told instead of the many important things that we’ve achieved? ...Black women, too often in the shadows of such accomplishments, actually powered the civil rights movement.” - Megan Thee Stallion
"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
"I think transwomen, and transpeople in general, show everyone that you can define what it means to be a man or woman on your own terms. A lot of what feminism is about is moving outside of roles and moving outside of expectations of who and what you're supposed to be to live a more authentic life." - Laverne Cox
“Women need a seat at the table, they need an invitation to be seated there, and in some cases, where this is not available, they need to create their own table. We need a global understanding that we cannot implement change effectively without women's political participation.” - Meghan Markle
"Women are leaders everywhere you look—from the CEO who runs a Fortune 500 company to the housewife who raises her children and heads her household. Our country was built by strong women, and we will continue to break down walls and defy stereotypes." - Nancy Pelosi
"The more I have spoken about feminism the more I have realized that fighting for women's rights has too often become synonymous with man-hating. If there is one thing I know for certain, it is that this has to stop." - Emma Watson
"You could make a case that, along with the technological revolution, the most provocative upending destabilizing thrilling change in the course of human history is that we’re finally in it… We're here now, women are in the world, and we will not be bullied." - Meryl Streep
"Justice is about making sure that being polite is not the same thing as being quiet. In fact, often times, the most righteous thing you can do is shake the table." - Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
"Maybe it just boils down to: I'm a woman who's really into her career, so I'm obsessed with the craft of my work. There's a romance in that for me.” - Mitski
"That man over there says that women need to be helped into carriages, and lifted over ditches, and to have the best place everywhere. Nobody ever helps me into carriages, or over mud-puddles, or gives me any best place! And ain't I a woman?" - Sojourner Truth
"I hear a lot of people saying, when talking about girls' empowerment and women as well, you'll often hear people saying, 'You're helping them find their voices', I fundamentally disagree with that. Women don't need to find their voice. They need to feel empowered to use it and people need to be encouraged to listen." - Meghan Markle
"By propagating women's nature as non-violent they are discouraging women from becoming fighters in the struggle for their own liberation and that of society." - Anuradha Ghandy
"For women, then, poetry is not a luxury. It is a vital necessity of our existence. It forms the quality of the light within which we predicate our hopes and dreams toward survival and change, first made into language, then into idea, then into more tangible action." - Audre Lorde
"When a woman is assaulted, one of the first questions people ask is, Did you say no? This question assumes that the answer was always yes, and that it is her job to revoke the agreement. To defuse the bomb she was given. But why are they allowed to touch us until we physically fight them off? Why is the door open until we have to slam it shut?" - Chanel Miller
"There is no gate, no lock, no bolt that you can set upon the freedom of my mind." - Virginia Woolf
“Women have served all these centuries as looking glasses possessing the magic and delicious power of reflecting the figure of man at twice its natural size.” - Virginia Woolf
“Men should think twice before making widowhood women's only path to power." - Gloria Steinem
“Find something you’re passionate about and keep tremendously interested in it.” - Julia Child
“I’m learning how to drown out the constant noise that is such an inseparable part of my life. I don’t have to prove anything to anyone. I only have to follow my heart and concentrate on what I want to say to the world. I run my world.” - Beyoncé
“As women, we have to start appreciating our own worth and each other’s worth. Seek out strong women to befriend, to align yourself with, to learn from, to collaborate with, to be inspired by, to support, and enlightened by.” - Madonna
“Some people think that you have to be the loudest voice in the room to make a difference. That is just not true. Often, the best thing we can do is turn down the volume. When the sound is quieter, you can actually hear what someone else is saying. And that can make a world of difference.” - Nikki Haley
“When I dare to be powerful, to use my strength in the service of my vision, then it becomes less and less important whether I am afraid.” - Audre Lorde
“A woman is the full circle. Within her is the power to create, nurture and transform.” - Diane Mariechild
“Women don’t need to find a voice, they have a voice, and they need to feel empowered to use it, and people need to be encouraged to listen.” - Meghan Markle
“Service is an opportunity for young women to really empower themselves." - Chelsea Clinton
“A strong woman understands that gifts such as logic, decisiveness, and strength are just as feminine as intuition and emotional connection. She values and uses all of her gifts.” - Nancy Rathburn
“Do not live someone else’s life and someone else’s idea of what womanhood is. Womanhood is you. Womanhood is everything that’s inside of you.” - Viola Davis
"Of course, I am not worried about intimidating men. The type of man who will be intimidated by me is exactly the type of man I have no interest in." - Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
"Women will be hidden no more. We will not remain hidden figures. We have names. It was a woman that gave you Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. It was a woman that gave you Malcolm X. And according to the Bible, it was a woman that gave you Jesus. Don't you ever forget it." - Janelle Monáe
"Freeing yourself was one thing, claiming ownership of that freed self was another." - Toni Morrison
"We know that when a woman speaks truth to power, there will be attempts to put her down... I'm not going to go anywhere." - Maxine Waters
"I hate to hear you talking so like a fine gentleman, and as if women were all fine ladies, instead of rational creatures. We none of us expect to be in smooth water all our days." - Jane Austen
"More and more women are realizing that only collective strength and action will allow us to be free to fight for the kind of society that meets basic human needs." - Roxanne Dunbar
“Who made man the exclusive judge, if women partake with him the gift of reason?” - Mary Wollstonecraft
“I don’t want to think about what I’m leaving. I just think about who I am every single day behind closed doors and behind cameras. And that’s what I focus on.” - Serena Williams
“If you want something said, ask a man; if you want something done, ask a woman.” - Margaret Thatcher
“There is a stubbornness about me that can never bear to be frightened at the will of others. My courage always rises at every attempt to intimidate me.” - Jane Austen
“What you do makes a difference, and you have to decide what kind of difference you want to make.” - Jane Goodall
“We cannot all succeed when half of us are held back. We call upon our sisters around the world to be brave – to embrace the strength within themselves and realize their full potential.” - Malala Yousafzai
“The fastest way to change society is to mobilize the women of the world.” - Charles Malik
“The role of women in the development of society is of utmost importance. In fact, it is the only thing that determines whether a society is strong and harmonious, or otherwise. Women are the backbone of society.” - Sri Sri Ravi Shankar
“Every woman that finally figured out her worth, has picked up her suitcases of pride and boarded a flight to freedom, which landed in the valley of change.” - Shannon L. Alder
"'It is impossible for you to do it,' was the terrible verdict. 'In the first place you are a woman and would need a protector, and even if it were possible for you to travel alone you would need to carry so much baggage that it would detain you in making rapid changes. Besides you speak nothing but English, so there is no use talking about it; no one but a man can do this.'
"'Very well,' I said angrily, 'Start the man, and I'll start the same day for some other newspaper and beat him.'" - Nellie Bly
