Quotes

'Do you think, because I am poor, obscure, plain, and little, I am soulless and heartless?'

- Jane Eyre

'A lot of people have told me along the way that my style and the music I do...is unmarketable. But the only reason I'm successful is because I have stayed true to myself'

- Lindsey Stirling

'It takes a great deal of courage to stand up to your enemies, but even more to stand up to your friends'

- Dumbledore

'The people that mind don't matter and the people that matter don't mind'

- Charlie McDonnell

'Sincerity is the beginning and end of all things, without it there is nothing'

- Zisi

'Don't cry because it's over, smile because it happened'

- Dr. Seuss

'For all its girl-power pop songs and 'princesses rule' T-shirts, our culture takes a harsh view of women who don't work to obtain the feminine norm. We are taught to feel ashamed of our bodies in their natural state. Leg and underarm hair? Gross. Breasts that are not lifted and separated by wire and Spandex? Embarrassing. A female face without make-up? Ugly. Femaleness in its natural form is so revolting that women must embrace the cult of femininity in order to be acceptable. To refuse to shave, wax, suck in, push out, paint and cover in the prescribed ways is to risk being identified as a creature unworthy of respectful treatment, being labelled a pig, a cow, a dog, being shoved into the category of radical, dyke, ugly, masculine, bitch. To be unfeminine is to risk being unemployable, unheard, untouchable, unfuckable'

- Emily Maguire

'Why fit in when you were born to stand out?'

- Dr Seuss

'First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win'

- Gandhi

'I hate the word 'homophobia'. It's not a phobia. You are not scared. You are an asshole.'

- Morgan Freeman

'A lot of parents will do anything for their kids except let them be themselves'

- Banksy

'I only know that people call me a feminist whenever I express sentiments that differentiate me from a doormat or a prostitute'

- Rebecca West

'The universe is made of stories, not of atoms'

- Muriel Rukeyser

'Fearless is not the absence of fear. It's not being completely unafraid. To me, fearless is having fears. Fearless is having doubts. Fearless is living in spite of those things that scare you to death. Fearless is falling madly in love again, even though you've been hurt before'

- Taylor Swift

'What you say might be too much for some people. Maybe it will come out all wrong and you'll stutter and you'll walk away embarrassed, wincing as you play it all back in your head. But I think the words you stop yourself from saying are the ones that will haunt you the longest. So say it to them. Or say it to yourself in the mirror. Say it in a letter you'll never send or in a book millions might read someday. I think you deserve to look back on your life without a chorus of resounding voices saying 'I could've, but it's too late now.' There is a time for silence. There is a time waiting your turn. But if you know how you feel, and you so clearly know what you need to say, you'll know it. I don't think you should wait. I think you should speak now.'

-Taylor Swift

'All those emotions - spanning from intense love, intense frustration, jealousy, confusion, all of that - in my mind, all those emotions are red. You know, there's nothing in between. There's nothing beige about any of those feelings'

- Taylor Swift

'My experiences in love have taught me difficult lessons, especially my experiences with crazy love. The red relationships. The ones that went from zero to a hundred miles per hour and then hit a wall and exploded. And it was awful. And ridiculous. And desperate. And thrilling. And when the dust settled, it was something I'd never take back. Because there is something to be said for being young and needing someone so badly, you jump in head first without looking. And there's something to be learned from waiting all day for a train that's never coming. And there's something to be proud of about moving on and realizing that real love shines golden like starlight, and doesn't fade or spontaneously combust.'

- Taylor Swift

'Marriage is a vital social institution. The exclusive commitment of two individuals to each other nurtures love and mutual support. Civil marriage is at once a deeply personal commitment to another human being and a highly public celebration of the ideals of mutuality, companionship, intimacy, fidelity and family. Because it fulfills yearnings for security, safe haven and connection that express our common humanity, civil marriage is an esteemed institution and the decision whether and whom to marry is among life's momentous acts of self-definition. It is undoubtedly for these concrete reasons, as well as for its intimately personal significance, that civil marriage has long been termed a 'civil right'. Without the right to choose to marry, one is excluded from the full range of human experience.' 

- Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court

'I'm going to cut you up and feed you to your best friend and tell him that it's beef because you're such a cow.' 

- Belephant

'Things will get better as you get older. Not your looks, Anonymous, if your looks are truly the problem, but your peers. People are assholes in their 20s, and pouring alcohol into assholes doesn't make 'em stink less. Straight boys raised to believe that women exist for their pleasure will sometimes feel personally affronted by unattractive women, and alcohol makes them feel entitled to comment. But the passage of time makes monsters of us all, Anonymous, and the young, relatively hot straight guys tormenting you today are the bald, paunchy, and if there is a God, burn victims of tomorrow.' 

- Dan Savage

'The reason we struggle with insecurity is because we compare our behind-the-scenes with everyone else's highlight reel'

- Steven Furtick

'If you are always trying to be normal you will never know how amazing you can be'

- Maya Angelou

'The more you are motivated by love, the more fearless and free your action will be'

- Dalai Lama

'Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid'

- Albert Einstein

'Do what you feel in your heart to be right, for you'll be criticized anyway'

- Eleanor Roosevelt

'I once was afraid of people saying "Who does she think she is?'. Now I have the courage to stand and say "This is who I am"'

- Oprah Winfrey

'An eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind'

- Gandhi

'There are two things you shouldn't waste your time on: things that don't matter, and people who think you don't matter'

- Anonymous

'Your silence will not protect you' 

- Audre Lorde

'The only way to avoid criticism is to say nothing, do nothing and be nothing'

- Aristotle

'In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends'

- Martin Luther King, Jr.

'The Venn Diagram of boys who don't want to date smart girls and the boys you don't want to date IS A CIRCLE'

- John Green

'We are all differently broken, semi-functional, rusted out love machines'

- Hank Green

'Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil? Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?'

- Epicurus

'Maybe there's something you're afraid to say, or someone you're afraid to love, or somewhere you're afraid to go. It's gonna hurt. It's gonna hurt because it matters' 

- John Green

'The best people possess a feeling for beauty, the courage to take risks, the discipline to tell the truth, the capacity for sacrifice. Ironically, their virtues make them vulnerable; they are often wounded, sometimes destroyed'

- Ernest Hemingway

'To terrify children with the image of hell, to consider women an inferior creation - is that good for the world?' 

- Christopher Hitchens

'The foundation of Christianity is based on the idea that intellectualism is the work of the Devil. Remember the apple on the tree? Okay, it was the Tree of Knowledge. You eat that, you're going to be as smart as God. We can't have that.'

- Frank Zappa

'Be thankful that you have a life, and forsake your vain and presumptuous desire for a second one'

- Richard Dawkins

'Religion was invented when the first conman met the first fool'

- Mark Twain

'There is something feeble and a little contemptible about a man who cannot face the perils of life without the help of comfortable myths. Moreover, since he is aware, however dimly, that his opinions are not rational, he becomes furious when they are disputed' 

- Betrand Russell

'Religion is comparable to a childhood neurosis. The whole thing is so patently infantile, so foreign to reality, that to anyone with a friendly attitude towards humanity it is painful to think that the great majority of mortals will never be able to rise above this view of life'

- Sigmund Freud

'All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing'

- Edmund Banks

'Prejudices are what fools use for reason' 

- Voltaire

'Human progress is neither automatic nor inevitable'

- Martin Luther King, Jr. 

'One there was a time when all people believed in God and the Church ruled. This time is called the Dark Ages' 

- George Bernard Shaw

'I swore never to be silent whenever and wherever human beings endure suffering and humiliation. We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented' 

- Elie Wiesel

'I am not free while any woman is unfree, even when her shackles are very different from my own'

- Audrey Lorde

'Be that strong girl that everyone knew would make it through the worst, be that fearless girl, the one who would dare to do anything, be that independent girl who didn't need a man; be that girl who never backed down'

- Taylor Swift

'Care about what other people think and you will always be their prisoner'

- Lao Tzu

'In the game of patriarchy, women are not the opposing team; they are the ball'

- Anita Sarkeesian

'Feminism isn't about making women stronger. Women are already strong. It's about changing the way the world sees that strength'

-  G. D. Anderson

'You can close your eyes to the things you don't want to see, but you can't close your heart to the things you don't want to feel'

- Johnny Depp

'People of all sexes have the right to explore masculinity, femininity - and the infinite variations in between - without criticism or ridicule'

- Leslie Feinberg

'I shall continue to do what I think is right whether anybody likes it or not'

- Harry S. Truman

'Courage doesn't always roar. Sometimes courage is the quiet voice at the end of the day saying 'I will try again tomorrow''

- Mary Anne Radmacher

'The world is not a wish-granting factory'

- John Green

'My thoughts are stars I cannot fathom into constellations'

- John Green

'And when people try to minimise your pain, they are doing you a disservice. And when you try to minimise your own pain, you're doing yourself a disservice. Don't do that. The truth is that it hurts because it's real. It hurts because it mattered. And that's an important thing to acknowledge to yourself. But that doesn't mean that it won't end, it won't get better. Because it will'

- John Green

'Violence does not always take visible form, and not all wounds gush blood' 

- Haruki Murakami

'I can be changed by what happens to me. But I refuse to be reduced by it'

- Maya Angelou

'Words can break someone into a million pieces, but they can also put them back together'

- Taylor Swift

'If the moon smiled, she would resemble you. You leave the same impression of something beautiful, but annhilating' 

- Sylvia Plath

'Those who tell the stories rule society'

- Plato

'The important people in our lives leave imprints. They may stay or go in the physical realm, but they are always there in your heart, because they helped form your heart. There's no getting over that.'

- David Levithan

'Please don’t expect me to always be good and kind and loving. There are times when I will be cold and thoughtless and hard to understand.'

- Sylvia Plath

'Failure is only the opportunity to begin again, only this time more wisely'

- Henry Ford

'Nerds like us are allowed to be unironically enthusiastic about stuff. Nerds are allowed to *love* stuff - like, jump-up-and-down-in-your-chair-can't-control-yourself *love it*. When people call people nerds, mostly what they're saying is "you like stuff", which is not a good insult at all. Like, "you are too enthusiastic about the miracle of human consciousness"'

- John Green

'The least I can do is speak out for those who cannot speak for themselves'

- Jane Goodall

'Young men need to be socialized in such a way that rape is as unthinkable to them as cannibalism' 

- Mary Pipher

'We seem okay with violence, but nudity we race to criticise and censor'

- Eva Mendes

'Go into the arts. I'm not kidding. The arts are not a way to make a living. They are a very human way of making life more bearable. Practising an art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make the soul grow, for heaven's sake. Sing in the shower. Dance to the radio. Tell stories. Write a poem to a friend, even a lousy poem. Do it as well as you possibly can. You will get an enormous reward. You will have created something'

- Kurt Vonnegut

'It's not a lack of female modesty but a sense of male entitlement that leads to sexual violence. And the idea that we women can change men's behaviour by changing our clothes is not only concerning, it has been debunked. As millions of women know all too well, no one ever avoided rape by wearing a longer skirt'

- Anne K. Ream

'It is illegal for women to go topless in most cities, yet you can buy a magazine of a woman without her top on at any 7/11 store. So, you can sell breasts, but you cannot wear breasts in America'

- Violet Rose

'Of course I am not worried about intimidating men. The type of man who will be intimidated by me is exactly the kind of man I have no interest in'

- Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

'We raise girls to cater to the fragile egos of men. We teach girls to shrink themselves, to make themselves smaller. We tell girls 'you can have ambition, but not too much. You should aim to be successful, but not too successful, otherwise you will threaten the man. [...] We teach girls shame - close your legs, cover yourself! We make them feel as though by being born female they're already guilty of something. And so girls grow up to be women who cannot see they have desire. They grow up to be women who silence themselves. They grow up to be women who cannot say what they truly think. And they grow up - and I think this is the worst thing we do to girls - they grow up to be women who turn pretense into an art form' 

- Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

'We do a great disservice to boys in how we raise them. We stifle the humanity of boys. We define masculinity in a very narrow way; masculinity becomes this hard small cage, and we put boys inside the cage. We teach boys to be afraid of fear. We teach boys to be afraid of weakness, of vulnerability. We teach them to masks their true selves because they have to be, in Nigeria speak, 'hard man'. [...] But by far the worst thing we do to males, by making them feel that they have to be 'hard', is that we leave them with very fragile egos. The more 'hard man' a man feels compelled to be, the weaker his ego is. And then we do a much greater disservice to girls, because we teach them to cater to the fragile egos of men'

- Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

'A well-read woman is a dangerous creature'

- Lisa Kleypas

'Wanting to be someone else is a waste of who you are'

- Kurt Cobain