73 Inspirational Quotes by and for Women

Inspire your students with these inspirational quotes for women by women! We can all use a little motivation from time to time, so share these inspirational quotes for women from some of the most successful and powerful voices in history. These inspirational quotes by women are perfect for getting things fired up during Women’s History Month or anytime.

Inspirational Quotes for Women

“If you don’t risk anything, you risk even more.” – Erica Jong

“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

“Technique and ability alone do not get you to the top; it is the willpower that is most important.” – Junko Tabei

“Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. The fearful are caught as often as the bold.” – Helen Keller

“You can be gorgeous at thirty, charming at forty, and irresistible for the rest of your life.” – Coco Chanel

“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

“Be messy and complicated and afraid and show up anyways.” – Glennon Doyle

“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

“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

“A woman with a voice is, by definition, a strong woman.” – Melinda Gates

“Women belong in all places where decisions are being made. … It shouldn’t be that women are the exception.” – Ruth Bader Ginsburg

“I feel now that the time is come when even a woman or a child who can speak a word for freedom and humanity is bound to speak.” – Harriet Beecher Stowe

“There is no limit to what we, as women, can accomplish.” – Michelle Obama

“Women, if the soul of the nation is to be saved, I believe you must become its soul.” – Coretta Scott King

“She does not know what the future holds, but she is grateful for slow and steady growth.” – Morgan Harper Nichols

“Women have discovered that they cannot rely on men’s chivalry to give them justice.” – Helen Keller

“When black women win victories, it’s a boost for virtually every segment of society.” – Angela Davis

“If you’re one of those people who has that little voice in the back of her mind saying, ‘Maybe I could do [fill in the blank],’ don’t tell it to be quiet. Give it a little room to grow, and try to find an environment it can grow in.” – Reese Witherspoon

“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

“Cautious, careful people, always casting about to preserve their reputations, can never effect a reform.” – Susan B. Anthony

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

“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

“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 from Pride and Prejudice

“A woman is like a tea bag. You never know how strong it is until it’s in hot water.” – Eleanor Roosevelt

“Change your life today. Don’t gamble on the future, act now, without delay.” – Simone de Beauvoir

“Make the most of yourself by fanning the tiny inner sparks of possibility into flames of achievement.” – Golda Meir

“Above all, be the heroine of your life, not the victim.” – Nora Ephron

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

“The way I see it, if you want the rainbow, you gotta put up with the rain!” – Dolly Parton

“What you do makes a difference, and you have to decide what kind of difference you want to make.” – Jane Goodall

“The difference between successful people and others is how long they spend time feeling sorry for themselves.” – Barbara Corcoran

“At the end of the day, we can endure much more than we think we can.” – Frida Kahlo

“I really think a champion is defined not by their wins but by how they can recover when they fall.” – Serena Williams

“Nothing is worth more than laughter. It is strength to laugh and to abandon oneself, to be light.” – Frida Kahlo

“If you can dance and be free and not be embarrassed, you can rule the world.” – Amy Poehler

“Have no fear of perfection; you’ll never reach it.” – Marie Curie

“Tremendous amounts of talent are being lost to our society just because that talent wears a skirt.” – Shirley Chisholm

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

“I have learned over the years that when one’s mind is made up, this diminishes fear; knowing what must be done does away with fear.” – Rosa Parks

“You cannot shake hands with a clenched fist.” – Indira Gandhi

“I say if I’m beautiful. I say if I’m strong. You will not determine my story—I will.” – Amy Schumer

“Real change, enduring change, happens one step at a time.” – Ruth Bader Ginsburg

“The most difficult thing is the decision to act. The rest is merely tenacity.” – Amelia Earhart

“If you don’t like something, change it. If you can’t change it, change your attitude.” – Maya Angelou

“I’ve been absolutely terrified every moment of my life—and I’ve never let it keep me from doing a single thing I wanted to do.” – Georgia O’Keeffe

“I choose to make the rest of my life the best of my life.” – Louise Hay

“In the mythic schema of all relations between men and women, man proposes, and woman is disposed of.” – Angela Carter

“We need to understand that there is no formula for how women should lead their lives. That is why we must respect the choices that each woman makes for herself and her family.” – Hillary Clinton

“Men and women are like right and left hands; it doesn’t make sense not to use both.” – Jeanette Rankin

“Postmodernism is an academic theory, originating in academia with an academic elite, not in the world of women and men, where feminist theory is rooted.” – Catharine MacKinnon

“Women are repeatedly accused of taking things personally. I cannot see any other honest way of taking them.” – Marya Mannes

“By jove, no wonder women don’t love war nor understand it, nor can operate in it as a rule; it takes a man to suffer what other men have invented.” – Janet Flanner

“There are always women who will take men on their own terms. If I were a man, I wouldn’t bother to change while there are women like that around.” – Ann Oakley

“While gossip among women is universally ridiculed as low and trivial, gossip among men, especially if it is about women, is called theory, or idea, or fact.” – Andrea Dworkin

“After centuries of dormancy, young women can now look toward a future moulded by their own hands.” – Rita Levi-Montalcini

“If women are supposed to be less rational and more emotional at the beginning of our menstrual cycle when the female hormone is at its lowest level, then why isn’t it logical to say that, in those few days, women behave the most like the way men behave all month long?” – Gloria Steinem

“Whatever women do they must do twice as well as men to be thought of half as good. Luckily, this is not difficult.” – Charlotte Whitton

“I often want to cry. That is the only advantage women have over men—at least they can cry.” – Jean Rhys

“I long to speak out about the intense inspiration that comes to me from the lives of strong women. They have made of their lives an intense adventure.” – Ruth Benedict

“Women have the right to say: this is surface, this falsifies reality, this degrades.” – Tillie Olsen

“I don’t think a female running a house is a problem, a broken family. It’s perceived as one because of the notion that a head is a man.” – Toni Morrison

“The sum and substance of female education in America, as in England, is training women to consider marriage as the sole object in life, and to pretend that they do not think so.” – Harriet Martineau

“Strengthen the female mind by enlarging it, and there will be an end to blind obedience.” – Mary Wollstonecraft

“I am no longer surprised at your knowing only six accomplished women. I rather wonder now at your knowing any.” – Jane Austen from Pride and Prejudice

“Sometimes I wonder if men and women really suit each other. Perhaps they should live next door and just visit now and then.” – Katharine Hepburn

“There’s no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families. And no government can do anything except through people, and people must look to themselves first.” – Margaret Thatcher

“Seeing their children touched and seared and wounded by race prejudice is one of the heaviest crosses which colored women have to bear.” – Mary Church Terrell

“As it turns out, social scientists have established only one fact about single women’s mental health: employment improves it.” – Susan Faludi

“Men need marriage more than women do. In fact, they need it to survive.” – Hanna Rosin

“Women dress alike all over the world: they dress to be annoying to other women.” – Elsa Schiaparelli

“Standing alone, eager to just believe, it’s good enough to be what you really are, but in your heart, uncertainty forever lies, and you’ll always be somewhere on the outside. – “Outside” lyrics by Mariah Carey

“Women are brought up to depend on a man and to feel naked and frightened without one. We have been taught to believe that as females we cannot stand alone, that we are too fragile, too delicate, too needful of protection.” – Colette Dowling

“Women’s liberation is the liberation of the feminine in the man and the masculine in the woman.” – Corita Kent

Enjoy these inspirational quotes for women? Check out Beautiful Poetry Quotes To Share With Students.

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