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The first and worst of all frauds is to cheat one’s self. All sin is easy after that.

—Pearl Bailey, a United Nations advisor who started out as a Tony Award-winning Broadway actress and singer

A woman [who] is willing to be herself and pursue her own potential runs not so much the risk of loneliness as the challenge of exposure to more interesting men—and people in general.

—Lorraine Hansberry, a writer who broke multiple records as both the youngest and the first African American playwright to win a New York Critics’ Circle award after writing her play A Raisin in the Sun

It requires philosophy and heroism to rise above the opinion of the wise men of all nations and races.

—Elizabeth Cady Stanton, an abolitionist and leader of the women’s rights movement who helped organize the National Women’s Suffrage Association and penned the revolutionary “Declaration of Sentiments”

Badass to the Bone:

Elizabeth Cady Stanton

In 1869, Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton organized the National Women’s Suffrage Association and put out a pro-feminist paper, The Revolution.

When the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution was passed in 1872, guaranteeing all Americans “equal protection of the laws” and specifically protecting the voting rights of “any of the male inhabitants” of any state, Anthony and Cady Stanton kicked into action demanding the right to vote for women as well. They began to work for a separate amendment giving this right to women; however, Congress blithely ignored the amendments put before them each year on the vote for women, and women’s suffrage would not come until almost fifty years later.

Both Stanton and Anthony were real hell-raisers. Stanton, along with Lucretia Mott, organized the first women’s rights convention in 1848, with a platform on women’s rights to property, equal pay for equal work, and the right to vote. Stanton was introduced to Susan B. Anthony three years later. They were a “dream team,” combining Elizabeth’s political theories and her ability to rouse people’s emotions with Susan’s unmatched skill as a logician and organizer par excellence. They founded the first temperance society for women and amazed everybody with their drastic call for drunkenness to be recognized as a legal basis for divorce.

Although Elizabeth Cady Stanton would not live to realize her dream of voting rights for women, the successors she trained did finally win this landmark victory for the women of America. Of the 260 women who attended the foremothers’ historic first women’s rights convention in 1848, only one woman lived long enough to see the passing of the victorious 1920 amendment grating women the right to vote—Charlotte Woodward.

I am my own Universe; I am my own Professor.

—Sylvia Ashton-Warner, an educator and artist who adapted British teaching methods for use with Maori children in New Zealand; she then drew on this experience of merging two vastly different cultures for her personal writing and poetry

Some feminists feel that a woman should never be wrong. We have a right to be wrong.

—Alice Childress, an award-winning playwright, novelist, and Tony-nominated actress who started writing after seeing how few good roles there were for African American women in theater

Affirmation Station

I rise above hardships.

I take care of myself.

I am satisfied with my accomplishments.

I look back on my life like a good day’s work, it was done and I am satisfied with it.

—Grandma Moses (Anna Mary Robertson Moses), a farmer whose detailed, colorful, rustic paintings were displayed at New York City’s Museum of Modern Art and around the country

I have often wished I had time to cultivate modesty … but I am too busy thinking about myself.

—Edith Sitwell, the legendary writer who, when asked at the age of four about her aspirations for her future, said that she wanted to be a genius when she grew up

By whom?

—Dorothy Parker, sassy satirist, critic, poet, and Academy Award-nominated writer, on being told that she was “outspoken”

My mother always told me I wouldn’t amount to anything because I procrastinate. I said, “Just wait.”

—Judy Tenuta, the first standup comic to win the American Comedy Award for “Best Female Comedian”

Did you hear what I said? It was very profound.