40 Inspiring Angela Davis Quotes About Feminism

Angela Yvonne Davis is a reputed American academic, author, and political activist.

She is best known for championing many social issues such as women's rights, prison reform, and abolishing racist and sexist policies. Angela resided in the 'Dynamite Hill' neighborhood along with her family as a child.

Angela Davis quotes can be thought-provoking, motivational, and can provide a new lens through which we view society. Angela Davis often discusses topics such as prisoner rights, class interests and the status of women at length in her literature. She staunchly defends the rights of women, black people, and other marginalized communities that have had to bear the worst atrocities. This list of Angela Davis quotes will surely give you a refresher on the topic of gender equality. The quotes also show how all of us should work with and help each other to progress in our personal and professional lives.  

If you would like to read other interesting quotes, you should check out Toni Morrison quotes and [Sylvia Plath quotes].

Angela Davis was a huge supporter of the feminist movement, and promoted intersectionality within the movement. Here's a list of feminist quotes and Angela Davis quotes related to gender equality.

1. "It (Feminism) has to involve a consciousness of capitalism and racism and colonialism and post colonialities and ability and more genders than we can even imagine, and more sexualities than we ever thought we could name."

- Angela Davis.

2. "To understand how any society functions you must understand the relationship between the men and the women."

- Angela Davis.

3. "No march, movement, or agenda that defines manhood in the narrowest terms and seeks to make women lesser partners in this quest for equality can be considered a positive step."

- Angela Davis.

4. "I'm a feminist so I believe in inhabiting contradictions."

- Angela Davis.

5. "Revolution is a serious thing, the most serious thing about a revolutionary life. When one commits oneself to the struggle, it must be for a lifetime."

- Angela Davis.

6. "We have to talk about liberating minds as well as liberating society."

- Angela Davis.

7. "You have to act as if it were possible to radically transform the world. And you have to do it all the time."

- Angela Davis.

8. "I believe in making contradictions productive, not in having to choose one side or the other side. As opposed to choosing either or, choosing both."

- Angela Davis.

9. "Feminism insists on methods of thought and action that urge us to think about things together that appear to be separate, and to disaggregate things that appear to naturally belong together."

- Angela Davis.

10. "I often like to talk about feminism not as something that adheres to bodies, not as something grounded in gendered bodies, but as an approach- as a way of conceptualizing, as a methodology, as a guide to strategies for struggle."

- Angela Davis.

11. "...we have to learn how to think and act and struggle against that which is ideologically constituted as 'normal.'"

- Angela Davis.

12. "Feminism involves so much more than gender equality. And it involves so much more than gender."

- Angela Davis.

13. "Many of us then thought that what we needed to do was to expand the category 'women' so that it could embrace Black women, Latina women, Native American women, and so forth."

- Angela Davis.

14. "Black feminism emerged as a theoretical and practical effort demonstrating that race, gender, and class are inseparable in the social worlds we inhabit. "

- Angela Davis.

Here's a list of inspirational Angela Davis quotes that will make you motivated to stand up for your personal beliefs. These Angela Davis quotes can be placed on posters or banners for individuals who want their daily dose of motivation. So, check out these Angela Davis quotes.

15. "Walls turned sideways are bridges."

- Angela Davis.

16. "I think the importance of doing activist work is precisely because it allows you to give back and to consider yourself not as a single individual who may have achieved whatever but to be a part of an ongoing historical movement."

- Angela Davis.

17. "I'm no longer accepting the things I cannot change...I'm changing the things I cannot accept."

- Angela Davis.

18. "Well of course there's been a great deal of progress over the last 40 years. We don't have laws that segregate black people within the society any longer."

- Angela Davis.

19. "I decided to teach because I think that any person who studies philosophy has to be actively involved."

- Angela Davis.

20. "Radical simply means 'grasping things at the root'."

- Angela Davis.

21. "It is important not only to have the awareness and to feel impelled to become involved, it’s important that there be a forum out there to which one can relate, an organization- a movement."

- Angela Davis.

22. "Progressive art can assist people to learn not only about the objective forces at work in the society in which they live, but also about the intensely social character of their interior lives."

- Angela Davis.

23. "But there’s a message there for everyone and it is that people can unite..."

- Angela Davis.

24. "It is essential to resist the depiction of history as the work of heroic individuals in order for people today to recognize their potential agency as a part of an ever-expanding community of struggle."

- Angela Davis.

25. "In a racist society it is not enough to be non-racist, we must be anti-racist."

- Angela Davis.

26. "...As older people, we have to learn how to take leadership from the youth."

- Angela Davis.

27. "It is in collectivities that we find reservoirs of hope and optimism."

- Angela Davis.

28. "Optimism is an absolute necessity, even if it’s only optimism of the will, as Gramsci said, and pessimism of the intellect."

- Angela Davis.

29. "We must always learn to lift as we climb."

- Angela Davis.

30. "Human beings cannot be willed and molded into non-existence."

- Angela Davis.

There are many Angela Davis quotes about revolution, the prison system, racial inequality, and systemic injustice, but these quotes are not exactly addressing those issues. These Angela Davis quotes talk about women's struggle and their perseverance.

31. "We must begin to create a revolutionary, multiracial women’s movement that seriously addresses the main issues affecting poor and working-class women."

- Angela Davis.

32. "Trans women have to fight to be included within the category 'woman' in a way that is not dissimilar from the earlier struggles of Black women and women of color who were assigned the gender female at birth."

- Angela Davis.

33. "When Black women stand up— as they did during the Montgomery Bus Boycott—as they did during the Black liberation era, earth-shaking changes occur."

- Angela Davis.

34. "I never tire of urging people to remember that it wasn’t a single individual or two who created that movement, that, as a matter of fact, it was largely women within collective contexts, Black women, poor Black women who were maids, washerwomen, and cooks."

- Angela Davis.

35. "When black women win victories, it is a boost for virtually every segment of society."

- Angela Davis.

36."The struggle against racism must be an ongoing theme of the anti-rape movement, which must not only defend women of color, but the many victims of the racist manipulation of the rape charge as well."

- Angela Davis.

37. "As the violent face of sexism, the threat of rape will continue to exist as long as the overall oppression of women remains an essential crutch for capitalism."

- Angela Davis.

38. "Harriet Tubman, Sojourner Truth, Ida Wells and Rosa Parks are not exceptional Black women as much as they are epitomes of Black womanhood."

- Angela Davis.

39. "Because the Grimke sisters had such a profound consciousness of the inseparability of the fight for Black Liberation and the fight for Women’s Liberation, they were never caught in the ideological snare of insisting that one struggle was absolutely more important than the other."

- Angela Davis.

40. "As working women knew all too well, their fathers, brothers, husbands and sons who exercised the right to vote continued to be miserably exploited by their wealthy employers. Political equality did not open the door to economic equality."

- Angela Davis.

Here at Kidadl, we have carefully created lots of interesting family-friendly quotes for everyone to enjoy! If you liked our suggestions for Angela Davis Quotes, then why not take a look at Betty Friedan quotes, or Bell Hooks quotes.

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