Women Empowerment Quotes: 9 Sourced Lines From Abigail Adams to Malala, by Occasion

On 24 April 2018 a bronze of the suffragist Millicent Fawcett was unveiled in Parliament Square, London. It was the first statue of a woman on the square and the first made there by a woman artist, Gillian Wearing. Fawcett holds a banner with four words she wrote about Emily Wilding Davison, the suffragette who died after running onto the course at the 1913 Epsom Derby. The words on the banner are hers and can be traced to her. That is the standard this page uses.

Below are nine women empowerment quotes in English, each checked against the letter, book, speech or interview it comes from. They are arranged by the occasion they suit best: a post for International Women's Day, a card for a colleague or graduate, the first minute of a talk, and a moment that calls for solidarity. After them come a short guide to writing your own message around a quote and a list of popular lines that circulate under the wrong name.

The nine lines at a glance

For an International Women's Day post

A Women's Day post is read in a scroll, so the line has to land in one pass. The two below are short, they have a clear date and author, and both come with a story that fits in a caption.

Remember the Ladies, and be more generous and favourable to them than your ancestors.

— Abigail Adams, letter to John Adams, 1776

Abigail Adams wrote this from Braintree, Massachusetts, in a letter begun on 31 March 1776, while John Adams sat in the Continental Congress in Philadelphia. The same paragraph warns, in her own spelling, that if "perticuliar care and attention is not paid to the Laidies we are determined to foment a Rebelion." John answered with a joke. The letter is held by the Massachusetts Historical Society, and its full text is online in the Adams Papers, which makes it one of the easiest lines on this page to cite with confidence.

Courage calls to courage everywhere.

— Millicent Fawcett, tribute to Emily Wilding Davison, 1920

The line is often dated to 1913, the year Davison died. The published accounts of the statue we checked place it in a piece Fawcett wrote about Davison in 1920, two years after some British women won the vote. Fawcett led the non-militant National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies, and Davison belonged to the militant Women's Social and Political Union, so the tribute crosses a real divide in the movement. That makes it a good fit for a post that thanks a whole group rather than one hero.

Example caption: "Remember the Ladies," Abigail Adams wrote to her husband in March 1776. Two hundred and fifty years later, we're remembering the women on our team who [specific achievement this year]. #IWD

For a card to a colleague, mentee or graduate

A card is private and read slowly, so a longer or more reflective line works. Choose the quote by what the person is stepping into: a leadership role, a creative project, a seat at a decision-making table.

I do not wish them to have power over men; but over themselves.

— Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, 1792

The sentence comes in chapter 4, right after Wollstonecraft quotes Rousseau's warning that educating women "like men" would reduce their power over men. Her answer flips the argument: the point of education is self-command, not influence over others. It is a good line for someone taking on their first management role, because it is about judgment rather than rank.

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A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction.

— Virginia Woolf, A Room of One's Own, 1929

Woolf built the book from two lectures she gave at Newnham and Girton, the women's colleges at Cambridge, in October 1928. She calls this "an opinion upon one minor point". The rest of the book argues that the point is not minor at all: creative work depends on income and uninterrupted time. For a card, the line suits someone starting a business, a degree or a book. Resist the urge to edit "fiction" into something broader; the original is stronger, and the reader will understand the extension.

Women belong in all places where decisions are being made.

— Ruth Bader Ginsburg, interview with Joan Biskupic, USA Today, 2009

Ginsburg said this in May 2009, when she was the only woman on the Supreme Court. She went on: "I don't say (the split) should be 50-50. It could be 60% men, 40% women, or the other way around. It shouldn't be that women are the exception." The follow-up matters if you quote her in a workplace setting: her claim was about presence, not quotas. It fits a note congratulating someone on a board seat, partnership or promotion.

Example card message: Ruth Bader Ginsburg said women belong "in all places where decisions are being made." Congratulations on [the new role]. The table is better with you at it.

For the first minute of a talk

An opening quote should set up the argument of the talk, not just decorate it. Each of these comes from a speech, so it already has a spoken rhythm.

If woman upset the world, do give her a chance to set it right side up again.

— Sojourner Truth, speech at the Women's Rights Convention, Akron, Ohio, reported in the Anti-Slavery Bugle, 1851

Truth spoke in Akron on 29 May 1851. Her friend Marius Robinson printed his account in the Anti-Slavery Bugle on 21 June 1851, and that is the closest record we have. She was answering the argument that Eve's sin justified women's subordination. The better-known "Ain't I a Woman?" version was published by Frances Gage in 1863, twelve years later; it changed most of Truth's words and gave her a Southern dialect she did not have, since she grew up in New York speaking Dutch. If you want to quote Truth accurately, quote Robinson's report.

We teach girls to shrink themselves, to make themselves smaller. We say to girls: You can have ambition, but not too much.

— Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, We Should All Be Feminists, 2014

Adichie first gave these words at TEDxEuston in London in December 2012. The book version appeared in 2014, and Beyoncé sampled the passage in "Flawless" the year before. It works as an opener because it describes a habit the audience will recognize. The talk then explains how that habit is passed on, which gives you a structure to follow.

We realise the importance of our voice when we are silenced.

— Malala Yousafzai, Speech to the UN Youth Assembly, 2013

Malala gave this speech in New York on 12 July 2013, her sixteenth birthday, nine months after she was shot by the Taliban on her way to school. It sits in a run of parallel sentences: "We realise the importance of light when we see darkness." The same speech ends with the line most people remember: "One child, one teacher, one book and one pen can change the world." Use the voice line to open a talk on speaking up in meetings, and save the pen line for education events.

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Example opener: In 2013, at sixteen, Malala Yousafzai told the United Nations: "We realise the importance of our voice when we are silenced." Today I want to talk about the voices in our meetings that we don't hear yet.

When the moment calls for solidarity

Some events are not celebrations: a panel on pay gaps, a gathering after bad news, an allyship workshop. These need a line that widens the circle instead of praising one person.

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

— Audre Lorde, The Uses of Anger: Women Responding to Racism, 1981

Lorde delivered this as the keynote of the National Women's Studies Association conference in Storrs, Connecticut, in June 1981. The essay was later collected in Sister Outsider (1984). Her audience was mostly white feminists, and the speech asked them to stop treating Black women's anger as a threat. The sentence continues with people of color and ends "Nor is any one of you." Quoting the first sentence alone is common and fair, but don't use it to mean "we are all the same"; Lorde's point is that the shackles differ. For more lines from this tradition, see our leadership quotes by women of color, each with its source.

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Writing your own message around a quote

The quote should support your message, not replace it. A pattern that works in cards, posts and speeches:

1. Name the source in passing. "As Woolf wrote in 1929…" is enough. It shows the line is real and gives the reader something to look up.
2. Quote the exact words. Don't polish or shorten a line until it says something the author did not say. If you cut words, use an ellipsis.
3. Add one concrete sentence about the person or the team. What did she do, finish or start? This is the part people remember.
4. Keep the length right for the format. Under about 25 words for a social caption, two or three sentences for a card, and no more than 30 seconds for a spoken opener.

Students preparing a speech can find more sourced lines in our leadership quotes for students. For one-line options for a slide or a team chat, try our short leadership quotes, sorted by moment.

Popular lines with the wrong name attached

• "No one can make you feel inferior without your consent." Credited to Eleanor Roosevelt, often with This Is My Story (1937) as the source. Quote Investigator found it in none of her books; the earliest known printing is Reader's Digest in 1940, without documentation. If you use it, write "attributed to Eleanor Roosevelt".
• "Well-behaved women seldom make history." Often credited to Roosevelt or Marilyn Monroe. It comes from the historian Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, in a 1976 American Quarterly article, "Vertuous Women Found", on how New England ministers wrote about women between 1668 and 1735. She later used it as the title of a 2007 book.
• "Ain't I a Woman?" This refrain comes from Frances Gage's 1863 version of Sojourner Truth's speech and does not appear in the 1851 report. If you use it, say it is from Gage's account.

If a line you like isn't on this page, check whether the post sharing it names a book, speech or date. If none of them does, that is usually because nobody has found one.