Alicia Keys

The memory of a day like today reminds me to hold the ones I love that much tighter, that much longer… Take that much more time to be present and to feel the blessing of another day…

We are a gorgeous, infinite circle of women all shades, all styles, in all the ways we were made. Inside of us everything blooms.

Have you watched Snow White lately? I get real funky about the classics; I don’t like (my sons) watching it. It’s totally sexist, misogynistic – she’s cleaning for seven dwarfs. There’s nothing wrong with a woman who chooses to stay at home with her family, it’s a hard-ass job, but it’s the way it’s spoken about.

What I’m learning is that there is so much to unlearn.

To all my goddesses in the world spreading love and light, power and radiance. Never stop being brilliant!!

It’s my nature to downplay.

I’ve been at so many tables with so many folks who are imposters. But shame on us if we sit by and let an imposter talk us down.

The abuse of women and girls is the most pervasive and unaddressed human rights violation on earth.

What sometimes is missing for young girls is that so early in our lives we’re shushed. And not just directly shushed. Sometimes we’re treated a little too preciously. They treat us like a doll. They don’t treat us like real beings, equal partners. I was loved early by my father, but I was never so precious that he didn’t think I could be there at the table.

I’m trying to do my part as a citizen. My part as a Hispanic. My part as a woman. As an American. I enjoy it. I think everybody should be civically engaged in a level that will affect policy. That’s the point. That how our government is set up.

[Feminism] means that you believe in the equality of the sexes in every way.

As for my girls, I’ll raise them to think they breathe fire.

The first thing about empowerment is to understand that you have the right to be involved. The second one is that you have something important to contribute. And the third piece is that you have to take the risk to contribute it.

No country can ever truly flourish if it stifles the potential of its women and deprives itself of the contributions of half its citizens.

Most plain girls are virtuous because of the scarcity of opportunity to be otherwise.

[on her mother] she’s a very smart, independent woman who was kind of coming into her own in the feminist movement of the 70s and 80s

I wish that girls could fail as bad as men do and be okay.

I love to challenge the status quo. That’s been my mission from day one as an actress and an early feminist wanting equality and wanting to push the limits of what’s possible.

Our first job in life as women, I think, is to get to know ourselves. And I think a lot of times we don’t do that. We spend our time pleasing, satisfying, looking out into the world to define who we are – listening to the messages, the images, the limited definitions that people have of who we are.

It is very important that women of this country be made aware of the dangers of osteoporosis in the sense that it is a silent and invisible disease with no symptoms whatsoever.

I wouldn’t say I’m a feminist. I think that would be, maybe, going too far.