Revolution from Within Quotes

“It still would be years before I understood the seriousness of my change of view. Much later, I recognized it in "Revolution," the essay of Polish journalist Ryszard Kapuscinski, who describes the moment when a man on the edge of a crowd looks back defiantly at a policeman — and when that policeman senses a sudden refusal to accept his defining gaze — as the imperceptible moment in which rebellion is born. "All books about all revolutions begin with a chapter that describes the decay of tottering authority or the misery and sufferings of the people," Kapuscinski writes. "They should begin with a psychological chapter — one that shows how a harassed, terrified man suddenly breaks his terror, stops being afraid. This unusual process — sometimes accomplished in an instant, like a shock — demands to be illustrated. Man gets rid of fear and feel free. Without that, there would be no revolution.”
― Gloria Steinem, Revolution from Within: A Book of Self-Esteem

“I’ve learned from these events that self-esteem plays as much a part in the destiny of nations as it does in the lives of individuals; that self-hatred leads to the need either to dominate or to be dominated; that citizens who refuse to obey anything but their own conscience can transform their countries; in short, that self-esteem is the basis of any real democracy.”
― Gloria Steinem, Revolution from Within: A Book of Self-Esteem

“We need to unlearn our respect for education, since it has undermined our respect for ourselves. It's worth taking time to demistify it. [...] All the things an adolescent can be [...] are reduced to a three digit number. [...] We too can decide how to value our education instead of letting them value us.”
― Gloria Steinem, Revolution from Within: A Book of Self-Esteem

“I began to understand with a terrible sureness that we teach what we need to learn and write what we need to know.”
― Gloria Steinem, Revolution from Within: A Book of Self-Esteem

“Like the spider spinning its web, we create much of the outer world from within ourselves. The universe is a joint product of the observer and the observed.”
― Gloria Steinem, Revolution from Within: A Book of Self-Esteem

“We are so many selves.
It’s not just the long-ago child within us who needs tenderness and inclusion, but the person we were last year, wanted to be yesterday, tried to become in one job or in one winter, in one love affair or in one house where even now, we can close our eyes and smell the rooms.
What brings together these ever-shifting selves of infinite reactions and returnings is this: There is always one true inner voice.
Trust it.”
― Gloria Steinem, Revolution from Within: A Book of Self-Esteem

“I think we each come out of the womb with some unique way of looking at the world and if we don't express it, we loose faith in ourselves.”
― Gloria Steinem, Revolution from Within: A Book of Self-Esteem

“Being graded for memorizing male accomplishments with the deep message that we can learn what others do but never do it ourselves.”
― Gloria Steinem, Revolution from Within: A Book of Self-Esteem

“Citizens who refuse to obey anything but their own conscience can transform countries, it is the basis of any real democracy.”
― Gloria Steinem, Revolution from Within: A Book of Self-Esteem

“No wonder the romance of Wuthering Heights endures—as do romantic myths in almost every culture. Indeed, the more patriarchal and gender-polarized a culture is, the more addicted to romance. These myths embody our yearning to be whole. No wonder romance so often begins at a physical distance or across a psychic chasm of class and race,* and thrives on death and separation. Projecting our lost qualities onto someone else can be done more easily from a distance.”
― Gloria Steinem, Revolution from Within: A Book of Self-Esteem

“Stand outside the rare movie with a strong and daring female protagonist, and watch women emerging with higher heads, stronger walks, and greater confidence. Consider the importance of a sports champion who comes from a group that has been made to feel it can’t win, a popular movie in which American Indians are finally the “good guys,” a violinist whose music soars while he sits onstage in leg braces, a deaf actress who introduces millions of moviegoers to the expressiveness of sign language, and even one woman who remains joyous, free, sexual, and good at her work after sixty or seventy. The images of power, grace, and competence that these people convey have a life-giving impact—just as trivialized, stereotyped, degrading, subservient, and pornographic images of bodies that look like ours do the opposite, as though we absorb that denigration or respect through our nerve endings. Wherever negative physical imagery has been part of low self-esteem, a counterpoint of positive imagery can be part of raising it.”
― Gloria Steinem, Revolution from Within: A Book of Self-Esteem

“To think about taking our place in nature instead of conquering it is a deep change in the way we see ourselves and the world. It means changing from binary and linear thinking to a cyclical paradigm that is a new declaration of interdependence.”
― Gloria Steinem, Revolution from Within: A Book of Self-Esteem

“Because we tend to treat others as we have been treated, a trustworthy system leads to more trust, corruption leads to more corruption, violence to more violence.”
― Gloria Steinem, Revolution from Within: A Book of Self-Esteem

“There is a healthier self within each of us, just wating for encouragement”
― Gloria Steinem, Revolution from Within: A Book of Self-Esteem

“As always, self-esteem had created an ability to be generous.”
― Gloria Steinem, Revolution from Within: A Book of Self-Esteem

“Never having seen women play chess, they assumed this game wasn't for them and without even a female teacher as role model, they dropped out.”
― Gloria Steinem, Revolution from Within: A Book of Self-Esteem

“Your problem is that you should like yourself better.” Of course, he was right—but how could she like herself when she felt she had no self ?”
― Gloria Steinem, Revolution from Within: A Book of Self-Esteem

“The ultimate in parallel thinking is the Golden Rule—providing it is read both ways. The traditional sequence assumes a healthy self-esteem and asks for empathy: “Do unto others as you would have others do unto you.” But for many people whose self-esteem has been suppressed, the revolution lies in reversing it: Do unto yourself as you would do unto others.”
― Gloria Steinem, Revolution from Within: A Book of Self-Esteem

“Many women feel invisible or aberrant when they are subsumed under a masculine term that is supposed to be universal; yet they are often made to feel trivial and nit-picking if they object. But look at it this way: Would a man feel included in “womankind”? Would he refer to himself as “chairwoman,” “Congresswoman,” or “Mr. Mary Smith”? If a male student earned a “Spinster of Arts” degree, a “Mistress of Science,” or had to apply for a “Sistership,” would he feel equal in academia? If men had grown up seeing God portrayed only as Mother and She, would they feel an equal godliness within themselves?”
― Gloria Steinem, Revolution from Within: A Book of Self-Esteem

“As I write this, there are mainstream educators trying to discredit efforts to diversify the academic canon by giving them the dreaded label “politically correct”—now known familiarly on campus as “P.C.” (which, as Robin Morgan has pointed out, might well stand for “Plain Courtesy”)—as if centuries of exclusion had not been the height (or depth) of politics.”
― Gloria Steinem, Revolution from Within: A Book of Self-Esteem

“if girls were raised a little more like boys—if they had more right to say no, to declare boundaries, to develop a strong personal identity, to be angry, to rebel—they would be less likely to be revictimized as adults.”
― Gloria Steinem, Revolution from Within: A Book of Self-Esteem

“All books about all revolutions begin with a chapter that describes the decay of tottering authority or the misery and sufferings of the people," Kapuscinski writes. "They should begin with a psychological chapter – one that shows how a harassed, terrified man suddenly breaks his terror, stops being afraid. This unusual process – sometimes accomplished in an instant, like a shock – demands to be illustrated. Man gets rid of fear and feels free. Without that, there would be no revolution.”
― Gloria Steinem, Revolution from Within: A Book of Self-Esteem

“When teachers of randomly selected students are told their students are slow, they become slower; when teachers believe their students are gifted, they become more gifted.”
― Gloria Steinem, Revolution from Within: A Book of Self-Esteem

“The truth was that I had internalized society's unserious estimate of all that was female - including myself.”
― Gloria Steinem, Revolution from Within: A Book of Self-Esteem

“I began to understand that self-esteem isn’t everything; it’s just that there’s nothing without it.”
― Gloria Steinem, Revolution from Within: A Book of Self-Esteem

“Artists strive to free this true and spontaneous self in their work. Creativity, meditation are ways of freeing an inner voice.”
― Gloria Steinem, Revolution from Within: A Book of Self-Esteem

“Nonetheless, all the excuses of my conscious mind couldn't keep my unconscious self from catching the contagious spirit of those women who picketed the Oak Room. When I faced the hotel manager again, I had glimpsed the world as if women mattered.”
― Gloria Steinem, Revolution from Within: A Book of Self-Esteem

“Looking at Barbados and Australia as relatively positive examples, one societal hallmark of self-esteem seems to be an ability to both give and demand fairness, an expectation that extends from the personal to the political.”
― Gloria Steinem, Revolution from Within: A Book of Self-Esteem

“the central concept of self-esteem – the belief that each person counts and can make a difference”
― Gloria Steinem, Revolution from Within: A Book of Self-Esteem

“Since studies show that low self-esteem correlates with both prejudice and violence – that people who have a negative view of themselves also tend to view other people and the world negatively – representatives were interested in introducing self-esteem programs in schools.”
― Gloria Steinem, Revolution from Within: A Book of Self-Esteem