“The key to the trap is, of course, education. The feminine mystique has made higher education for women seem suspect, unnecessary and even dangerous. But I think that education, and only education, has saved, and can continue to save, American women from the greater dangers of the feminine mystique.”

“You can have it all, just not all at the same time.”

“It is better for a woman to compete impersonally in society, as men do, than to compete for dominance in her own home with her husband, compete with her neighbors for empty status, and so smother her son that he cannot compete at all.”

“We need to see men and women as equal partners, but it's hard to think of movies that do that. When I talk to people, they think of movies of forty-five years ago! Hepburn and Tracy!”

“Men are not the enemy, but the fellow victims. The real enemy is women's denigration of themselves.”

“Aging is not lost youth but a new stage of opportunity and strength.”

“Neither woman nor man lives by work or love alone.... The human self defines itself and grows through love and work: All psychology before and after Freud boils down to that.”

“It is easier to live life through someone else than to become complete yourself.”

“When she stopped conforming to the conventional picture of femininity she finally began to enjoy being a woman.”

“We couldn't possibly know where it would lead but we knew it had to be done.”

“We couldn't possibly know where it would lead but we knew it had to be done.”