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Women's voices quotes, explained

Speeches and lines by women, and sayings about them, with the real words and the stories behind them. Each one is checked against its original source, so you know who really said it before you use it.

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“Beware, for I am fearless and therefore powerful.”
Mary Shelley · 1818
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“Beware, for I am fearless and therefore powerful.”
Mary Shelley · Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus, Chapter 20 · 1818 · Writer

A threat, not a pep talk. The creature says it to his maker at the moment Victor Frankenstein destroys the half-built female companion he had promised him. It is the point at which a lonely, pleading creature turns into an avenger, and it is the line that people most often lift out of the book and put on posters.

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“Reader, I married him.”
Charlotte Brontë · Jane Eyre, Chapter 38 (Conclusion) · 1847 · Writer

The first sentence of the last chapter of Jane Eyre. After a whole novel of hesitation, refusals and a flight across the moors, Jane tells the reader the news in four plain words, and she tells it as her own decision.

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≈ Paraphrase
“Ain't I a woman?”
Sojourner Truth · Speech at the Ohio Women's Rights Convention · 1851 · Activist

Truth did give a famous speech for women's rights in 1851, but the refrain “Ain't I a woman?” appears only in a version published twelve years later by another activist.

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“Arise, then, women of this day!”
Julia Ward Howe · “Appeal to Womanhood Throughout the World,” later called the Mother's Day Proclamation · 1870 · Activist

Howe called on mothers everywhere to unite and refuse to let their sons be sent to kill other mothers' sons. Her Mother's Day was a day of protest for peace.

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“Her children arise up, and call her blessed.”
Book of Proverbs · The Bible, Proverbs 31:28 (King James Version) · 1611 · Religious figure

Part of a poem praising a wise, hard-working, generous woman. Her children and husband honor her because her life has blessed them.

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“Mothers are the best lovers in the world.”
Louisa May Alcott · Little Women, Part Second, chapter “All Alone” · 1869 · Writer

Talking with her mother after Beth's death, Jo says no one loves you like a mother, while admitting she is starting to long for other kinds of love too.

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“No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.”
Often credited to Eleanor Roosevelt · Credited to her in print from the 1930s; not found in her own writings · 1935

An empowering line credited to Eleanor Roosevelt during her lifetime. It has never been found in her columns, books or speeches, so its true origin is unknown.

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“The hand that rocks the cradle is the hand that rules the world.”
William Ross Wallace · “The Hand That Rocks the Cradle Is the Hand That Rules the World” (poem) · 1865 · Poet

Mothers shape the next generation, so their influence on the world is greater than any king's or general's. The poem praises motherhood as the strongest force for good.

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✕ Misattributed
“Well-behaved women seldom make history.”
Often credited to Marilyn Monroe · Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, “Vertuous Women Found,” American Quarterly · 1976

A line from an academic article about forgotten Puritan women. Its author meant that ordinary, dutiful women are left out of history books, not that women should misbehave.

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