If “WOMAN” was to be an acronym, what would it be? “Without One Men Are Nothing?” That won’t be far from the truth because women are the backbone of every family which makes up the society that the men claim to rule. Irrespective of the International Women’s Day, which is celebrated every March 8, this special gender is worth being put on the spotlight every single day of the year for their uniqueness, beautiful heart and amazing abilities. BuzzNigeria celebrates women all over the world with these quotes said/written by great women in order to inspire other women.
Most lists of motivational quotes are dominated by men, and it certainly isn’t because women lack words of wisdom. It’s simply because men want to dominate every sector. However, the quotes below are from great women – dead and alive, and they span from different works of life. These quotes were coined at the right time with powerful words just perfect enough to portray the author’s feeling and school of though as well as motivate someone who needs a push to get to the next level. Let’s get through the list:
1. “If you don’t like being a doormat then get off the floor.”
2. “A lot of people are afraid to say what they want. That’s why they don’t get what they want.”
3. “Whatever you do, be different – that was the advice my mother gave me, and I can’t think of a better advice for an entrepreneur. If you’re different, you will stand out.”
4. “If I stop to kick every barking dog I am not going to get where I’m going.” -Jackie Joyner-Kersee
5. “Optimism is the faith that leads to achievement.” – Helen Keller
6. “You are the one that possesses the keys to your being. You carry the passport to your own happiness.” – Diane von Furstenberg
7. “If you think taking care of yourself is selfish, change your mind. If you don’t, you’re simply ducking your responsibilities.” – Ann Richards
8. “You can never leave footprints that last if you are always walking on tiptoe.” – Leymah Gbowee
9. “You can’t give up! If you give up, you’re like everybody else.” – Chris Evert
10. “Cautious, careful people, always casting about to preserve their reputations can never effect a reform.” – Susan B. Anthony
11. “No matter how difficult and painful it may be, nothing sounds as good to the soul as the truth.” – Martha Beck
12. “Done is better than perfect.” – Sheryl Sandberg
13. “One of the secrets to staying young is to always do things you don’t know how to do, to keep learning.” – Ruth Reichl
14. “Be first and be lonely.” – Ginni Rometty
15. “Don’t live life in the past lane.” – Samantha Ettus
16. “Because I am a woman, I must make unusual efforts to succeed. If I fail no one will say “she doesn’t have what it takes,” they will say “women don’t have what it takes.” – Claire Boothe Luce.
17. “A strong woman is a woman who is determined to do what others have determined not to do.” – Marge Piercy
18. “The question isn’t “who is going to let me,” but “who is going to stop me.” – Ayn Rand
19. “People think at the end of the day that a man is the answer to fulfilment. Actually, a job is better for me.” Princess Diana
20. “I was smart enough to go through any door that opened.” – Joan Rivers
21. “One cannot accomplish anything without fanaticism.” – Eva Perón
22. “Look your best – who said love is blind?” – Mae West
23. “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
24. “Don’t take too much credit for your children, or too much blame!” – Debora Spar
25. “You can imprison a man, but not an idea. You can exile a man, but not an idea. You can kill a man, but not an idea.” – Benazir Bhutto
26. “Step out of the history that is holding you back. Step into the new story you are willing to create.” – Oprah Winfrey
27. “What you do makes a difference, and you have to decide what kind of difference you want to make.” – Jane Goodall
28. “When the whole world is silent, even one voice becomes powerful.” – Malala Yousafzai
29. I am no bird; and no net ensnares me: I am a free human being with an independent will.” – Charlotte Brontë
30. “Make the most of yourself by fanning the tiny, inner sparks of possibility into flames of achievement.” – Golda Meir
31. “Knowing what must be done does away with fear.” – Rosa Parks
32. “I didn’t get there by wishing for it or hoping for it, but by working for it.” – Estée Lauder
33. “The way we talk to our children becomes their inner voice.” – Peggy O’Mara
34. “The most difficult thing is the decision to act, the rest is merely tenacity.” – Amelia Earhart
35. “The difference between successful people and others is how long they spend time feeling sorry for themselves.” – Barbara Corcoran
36. “You can waste your lives drawing lines. Or you can live your life crossing them.” – Shonda Rhimes
37. “I’d rather regret the things I’ve done than regret the things I haven’t done.” – Lucille Ball
38. “I hope the fathers and mothers of little girls will look at them and say ‘yes, women can.’” – Dilma Rousseff
39. “Beware of monotony; it’s the mother of all the deadly sins.” – Edith Wharton
40. “If you don’t like the road you’re walking, start paving another one.” – Dolly Parton
41. “If you don’t risk anything, you risk even more.” – Erica Jong
42. “I have stood on a mountain of no’s for one yes.” – B. Smith
43. “I firmly believe you never should spend your time being the former anything.” -Condoleezza Rice
44. “I may be wearing makeup, but I can throw a fastball by you at the same time.” -Jennie Finch
45. “A good compromise is one where everybody makes a contribution.” – Angela Merkel
46. “I choose to make the rest of my life the best of my life.” – Louise Hay
47. “Drama is very important in life: You have to come on with a bang. You never want to go out with a whimper.” – Julia Child
48. “If your home environment is good and peaceful and easy, your life is better and easier.” – Lori Greiner
49. “Above all, be the heroine of your life, not the victim.” – Nora Ephron
50. “You should treat your marriage like a business that you wouldn’t want to let fail.” – Lisa Ling
51. “It’s one of the greatest gifts you can give yourself, to forgive. Forgive everybody.” – Maya Angelou
52. “Change your life today. Don’t gamble on the future, act now, without delay.” -Simone de Beauvoir
53. “If you’re not making some notable mistakes along the way, you’re certainly not taking enough business and career chances.” – Sallie Krawcheck
54. “A surplus of effort could overcome a deficit of confidence.” – Sonia Sotomayor
55. “Doubt is a killer. You just have to know who you are and what you stand for.” -Jennifer Lopez
56. “You can be the lead in your own life.” – Kerry Washington
57. “When you feel copied, remember that people can only go where you have already been, they have no idea where you are going next.” – Liz Lange
58. “You can’t please everyone, and you can’t make everyone like you.” – Katie Couric
59. “No one changes the world who isn’t obsessed.” – Billie Jean King
60. “Power’s not given to you. You have to take it.” – Beyoncé Knowles Carter
61. “The best thing to hold onto in life is each other.” – Audrey Hepburn
62. “Normal is not something to aspire to, it’s something to get away from.” – Jodie Foster
63. “I am always busy, which is perhaps the chief reason why I am always well.” -Elizabeth Cady Stanton
64. “I learned a long time ago that there is something worse than missing the goal, and that’s not pulling the trigger.” – Mia Hamm
65. “When I’m hungry, I eat. When I’m thirsty, I drink. When I feel like saying something, I say it.” – Madonna
66. “Owning our story can be hard but not nearly as difficult as spending our lives running from it.” – Brene Brown
67. “I do not try to dance better than anyone else. I only try to dance better than myself.” – Arianna Huffington
68. “I’m always perpetually out of my comfort zone.” – Tory Burch
69. “If you can’t go straight ahead, you go around the corner.” – Cher
70. “If you don’t get out of the box you’ve been raised in, you won’t understand how much bigger the world is.” – Angelina Jolie
71. “Everyone shines, given the right lighting.” – Susan Cain
72. “If you’re someone people count on, particularly in difficult moments, that’s a sign of a life lived honorably.” – Rachel Maddow
73. “When you embrace your difference, your DNA, your look or heritage or religion or your unusual name, that’s when you start to shine.” – Bethenny Frankel
74. “You can’t be that kid standing at the top of the waterslide, overthinking it. You have to go down the chute.” – Tina Fey
75. “If you just set out to be liked, you would be prepared to compromise on anything at any time, and you would achieve nothing.” – Margaret Thatcher
76. “The challenge is not to be perfect, it’s to be whole.” – Jane Fonda
77. “Don’t look at your feet to see if you are doing it right. Just dance.” – Anne Lamott
78. “There are two kinds of people, those who do the work and those who take the credit. Try to be in the first group; there is less competition there.” – Indira Gandhi
79. “All careers go up and down like friendships, like marriages, like anything else, and you can’t bat a thousand all the time.” – Julie Andrews
80. “It is past time for women to take their rightful place, side by side with men, in the rooms where the fates of peoples, where their children’s and grandchildren’s fates, are decided.” – Hillary Clinton
81. “I would venture to guess that Anon, who wrote so many poems without signing them, was often a woman.” – Virginia Woolf
82. “Being a woman is a terribly difficult trade since it consists principally of dealings with men.” – Joseph Conrad, Chance
83. “Well-behaved women seldom make history.” – Laurel Thatcher Ulrich
84. “Lock up your libraries if you like; but there is no gate, no lock, no bolt that you can set upon the freedom of my mind.” – Virginia Woolf
85. “The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they have none.” – Charlotte Brontë
86. “Courage is like a muscle, we strengthen it by use.” – Ruth Gordon
87. “A girl should be two things: classy and fabulous.” – Coco Chanel
88. “When a man gives his opinion, he’s a man. When a woman gives her opinion, she’s a bitch.” – Bette Davis
89. “In politics, If you want anything said, ask a man. If you want anything done, ask a woman.” – Margaret Thatcher
90. “No woman really wants a man to carry her off; she only wants him to want to do it.” – Elizabeth Peters
91. “How wrong is it for a woman to expect the man to build the world she wants, rather than to create it herself?” – Anaïs Nin
92. “I hate to hear you talk about all women as if they were fine ladies instead of rational creatures. None of us want to be in calm waters all our lives.” – Jane Austen
93. “Better to be strong than pretty and useless.” – Lilith Saintcrow
94. “I’m tough, I’m ambitious, and I know exactly what I want. If that makes me a bitch, okay.” – Madonna
95. “Why are women so much more interesting to men than men are to women?” – Virginia Woolf
96. “Women must tell men always that they are the strong ones. They are the big, the strong, the wonderful. In truth, women are the strong ones. It is just my opinion, I am not a professor.” – Coco Chanel
97. “I do not wish women to have power over men; but over themselves.” – Mary Wollstonecraft
98. “Women think with their whole bodies and they see things as a whole more than men do.” – Dorothy Day
99. “Why is it men are permitted to be obsessed about their work, but women are only permitted to be obsessed about men?” – Barbra Streisand
100. “Women in particular need to keep an eye on their physical and mental health, because if we’re scurrying to and from appointments and errands, we don’t have a lot of time to take care of ourselves. We need to do a better job of putting ourselves higher on our own “to do” list.” – Michelle Obama
101. “In order to be irreplaceable one must always be different.” – Coco Chanel
102. “Stop wearing your wishbone where your backbone ought to be.” Elizabeth Gilbert
103. “Spread love everywhere you go. Let no one ever come to you without leaving happier.” – Mother Teresa
104. “The thing women have yet to learn is nobody gives you power. You just take it.” – Roseanne Barr
105. “It was we, the people; not we, the white male citizens; nor yet we, the male citizens; but we, the whole people, who formed the Union. Men, their rights and nothing more; women, their rights and nothing less.” –
106. “A strong woman understands that the gifts such as logic, decisiveness, and strength are just as feminine as intuition and emotional connection. She values and uses all of her gifts.” –
107. “A woman is the full circle. Within her is the power to create, nurture and transform.” –
108. “I want to do is because I want to do it. Women must try to do things as men have tried. When they fail, their failure must be but a challenge to others.”
109. “Just watch, all of you men. I’ll show you what a woman can do, I’ll go across the country, I’ll race to the Moon… I’ll never look back.”-
110. “The best protection any woman can have is courage.” –
111. “Take criticism seriously, but not personally. If there is truth or merit in the criticism, try to learn from it. Otherwise, let it roll right off you.” – Hillary Clinton
112. “When we speak we are afraid our words will not be heard or welcomed. But when we are silent, we are still afraid. So it is better to speak.” – Audre Lorde
113. “We ask justice, we ask equality, we ask that all the civil and political rights that belong to citizens of the United States, be guaranteed to us and our daughters forever.”
114. “If somebody can do something 80 percent as good as you think you would have done it yourself, then you’ve got to let it go.” – Sara Blakely
115. “This journey has always been about reaching your own other shore no matter what it is, and that dream continues.” – Diana Nyad
116. “You have trust in what you think. If you splinter yourself and try to please everyone, you can’t.” – Annie Leibovitz
117. “When we do the best we can, we never know what miracle is wrought in our life, or in the life of another.”
118. “Any woman who understands the problems of running a home will be nearer to understanding the problems of running a country.”
119. “If you obey all the rules, you miss all the fun.”
120. “I’ve come to believe that each of us has a personal calling that’s as unique as a fingerprint – and that the best way to succeed is to discover what you love and then find a way to offer it to others in the form of service, working hard, and also allowing the energy of the universe to lead you.”