Viola Davis

I believe in gender equality. Being a feminist is for both women and men. I am a feminist.

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

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’ve come into loving and understanding the feminine side of me. How powerful a woman and her femininity is… how strong, how graceful, how gorgeous, how beautiful. I love getting to know the many sides of myself. I embrace them all.

I feel there are certain people who are systematically ripping (feminism) down because of their lack of regard and their ignorance about what the women before us had to go through.

I think the golden rule for men should be: If you’re a man, don’t say anything to a woman on the street that you wouldn’t want a man saying to you in prison.

I never identified with the feminist movement in a strong way. I just kind of lived it. I didn’t politicize it. I didn’t follow any written rules to what it meant to be a feminist. I had my own sense of what was right and wrong.

Little girls think it’s necessary to put all their business on MySpace and Facebook, and I think it’s a shame… I’m all about mystery.

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.

It’s about being alive and feisty and not sitting down and shutting up. Even if people would like you to.

You’’re a feminist if you go to a Jay-Z and Beyoncé concert, and you’’re NOT like, ‘mmm, I feel like Beyoncé should be making 23 percent less money than Jay-Z.’

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.

I guess that maybe breasts are the most important part of the body when you think about it, I mean without them employers just wouldn’t know who to give the smaller paychecks to.

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.

Today, be the basass girl you were too lazy to be yesterday.