Abbey Lincoln

I don’t have to lay on the couch and see a therapist because my therapy is in art.

I loved Billie Holiday more than any other person other than myself on the stage.

I am a Woman Phenomenally. Phenomenal Woman, that’s me.

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.

It’s work having a vagina. Guys don’t think that it’s work but it is. You think it shows up like that to the event? It doesn’t. Every night it’s like getting it ready for its first Quinceanera, believe me.

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

Do not live someone else’s life and someone else’s idea of what womanhood is. Womanhood is you. Womanhood is everything that’s inside of you.

I actually trust the women I know. I trust them with their choices, I trust them with their bodies and I trust them with their children. I trust that they are decent enough and wise enough and worthy enough to carry the right of abortion.

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.

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.

There’s something so special about a woman who dominates in a man’s world. It takes a certain grace, strength, intelligence, fearlessness, and the nerve to never take no for an answer.

The argument that ‘boys will be boys’ actually carries the profoundly anti-male implication that we should expect bad behaviors from boys and men. The assumption is that they are somehow not capable of acting appropriately, or treating girls and women with respect.

I didn’t know what I wanted to do, but I always knew the woman I wanted to be.

[My father] always reminded us that it was important to stand up for your rights, and regardless of who you are and where you come from, to hold your head up high with dignity and respect.

A woman who is convinced that she deserves to accept only the best challenges herself to give the best. Then she is living phenomenally.

I do respect them; I have great respect for women. In fact, one of the reasons ‘The Apprentice’ was such a successful show for so many years, the audience of women was fantastic.

I was subscribing to this sick identity. … Stay in your place, be feminine, be a lady, don’t make too much noise.