Joseph Gordon-Levitt

There’s a long, long history of women suffering abuse, injustice, and not having the same opportunities as men, and I think that’s been very detrimental to the human race as a whole.

My first instinct is great pride for all of us as women who are finding our voices.

The sadness of the women’s movement is that they don’t allow the necessity of love. See, I don’t personally trust any revolution where love is not allowed.

A strong woman looks a challenge in the eye and gives it a wink.

You can’t whisper magical thoughts in your daughter’s ear and go into a workplace where you tolerate [this] existence. If you are tolerating that, that’s the workplace that will be waiting for your little girl, and you have sold her a bill of goods.

I advise young women: Negotiate hard and know your worth.

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.

It is by standing up for the rights of girls and women that we truly measure up as men.

And to all of the little girls who are watching this, never doubt that you are valuable and powerful and deserving of every chance and opportunity in the world to pursue and achieve your own dreams.

Until we’re in those rooms as equally as men are, it can’t shift.

If you look up feminist in the dictionary, it just means someone who believes men and women have equal rights …

Strong men, men who are truly role models, don’t need to put down women to make themselves feel powerful.

The fact that the adult American Negro female emerges a formidable character is often met with amazement, distaste and even belligerance. It is seldom accepted as an inevitable outcome of the struggle won by survivors, and deserves respect if not enthusiastic acceptance.

What gets me is how many women – young women – give up their power and their sense of self. Thinking they’re going to get more out of life if they take off their clothes and objectify themselves, instead of functioning on the principle that they’re smart and capable, that you can be an actress and not be on the covers of T&A magazines. I’m flabbergasted by how many legitimate actresses do that. It blows my mind.

I have tremendous respect for women.

I repeat, sir, that in whatever position you place a woman she is an ornament to society and a treasure to the world. As a sweetheart, she has few equals and no superiors; as a cousin, she is convenient; as a wealthy grandmother with an incurable distemper, she is precious; as a wet-nurse, she has no equal among men. What, sir, would the people of the earth be without woman? They would be scarce, sir, almighty scarce.