We need to take a leap of the imagination and envision nations as the best kinds of families: the democratic ones we are
trying to create in our own lives. A hierarchical family must
be changed anyway if we are to stop producing leaders whose
unexamined early lives are then played out on a national and
international stage.… Changing the way we raise children is the only long-term path to peace or arms control, and neither
has ever been more crucial. As the feminist adage says, "The
personal is political.

About Gloria Steinem

Gloria Marie Steinem ( STY-nəm; March 25, 1934 – September 2, 2026) was an American journalist and social movement activist who emerged as a nationally recognized leader of second-wave feminism in the United States in the late 1960s and early 1970s, and who remained particularly prominent in the 1980s and...

More quotations from Gloria Steinem

Happy or unhappy, families are all mysterious.

—Gloria Steinem

Someone once asked me why women don't gamble as much as men do, and I gave the common-sensical reply that we don't have as much money. That was a true but incomplete answer. In fact, women's total instinct for gambling is satisfied by marriage.

—Gloria Steinem

Evil is obvious only in retrospect.

—Gloria Steinem

evil

Each individual woman's body demands to be accepted on its own terms.

—Gloria Steinem

body

I have yet to hear a man ask for advice on how to combine marriage and a career.

—Gloria Steinem

advice career marriage men

More quotations tagged with “family”

How different my own activism would be if every time something happened, I asked myself, "What would I do if this was my family?

—Bushra Rehman

activism family

It's impossible to be loyal to your family, your friends, your country, and your principles, all at the same time.

—Mignon McLaughlin

friends family loyalty

A family's not the people that you were born to. A family's who you choose to love.

—Melanie Shawn in Forever Us

love friendship family

The most important thing in the world is family and love.

—John Wooden

love family

I think people that have a brother or sister don't realize how lucky they are. Sure, they fight a lot, but to know that there's always somebody there, somebody that's family.

—Unknown

family

History

16 Jan 2016 Added
26 Oct 2026 Wording changed

Previous wording

We need to take a leap of the imagination and envision nations as the best kinds of families: the democratic ones we are
trying to create in our own lives. A hierarchical family must
be changed anyway if we are to stop producing leaders whose
unexamined early lives are then played out on a national and
international stage. . . . Changing the way we raise children is the only long-term path to peace or arms control, and neither
has ever been more crucial. As the feminist adage says, "The
personal is political.