So I've collected 100 inspirational quotes from great women through history: females who have shaped our world, who have helped advance society or achieved great things.

Rosa Parks (1913-2005) - "The First Lady of Civil Rights"

1. Memories of our lives, of our works and our deeds will continue in others.
   
   -- Rosa Parks
2. A little simplification would be the first step toward rational living, I think.
   -- Eleanor Roosevelt
3. You cannot hope to build a better world without improving the individuals. To that end, each of us must work for our own improvement and, at the same time, share a general responsibility for all humanity. 
   
   -- Marie Curie
4. Woman must not accept; she must challenge. She must not be awed by that which has been built up around her; she must reverence that woman in her which struggles for expression.
   
   -- Margaret Sanger
5. One of the oldest human needs is having someone to wonder where you are, when you don't come home at night.
   
   -- Margaret Mead
6. It sometimes happens that a woman is handsomer at twenty-nine than she was ten years before. 
   
   -- Jane Austen
7. The good we secure for ourselves is precarious and uncertain until it is secured for all of us and incorporated into our common life.
   
   -- Jane Addams
8. It is hardly surprising that women concentrate on the way they look instead of what was in their minds since not much has been put in their minds to begin with
   
   -- Mary Wolstonecraft Shelley
9. Sooner or later we all discover that the important moments in life are not the advertised ones, not the birthdays, the graduations, the weddings, not the great goals achieved. The real milestones are less prepossessing. They come to the door of memory unannounced, stray dogs that amble in, sniff around a bit and simply never leave. Our lives are measured by these.
   
   -- Susan B. Anthony
10. The best protection any woman can have . . . is courage.
    
    -- Elizabeth Cady Stanton



Elizabeth I (1533-1603) - Queen of England

11. I know I have the body but of a weak and feeble woman. But I have the heart and stomach of a king - and of a King of England.
    
    -- Elizabeth I
12. Every great dream begins with a dreamer. Always remember, you have within you the strength, the patience, and the passion to reach for the stars to change the world.
    
    -- Harriet Tubman
13. A lot of people are afraid to say what they want. That's why they don't get what they want.
    
    -- Madonna
14. I've been absolutely terrified every moment of my life -- and I've never let it keep me from doing a single thing I wanted to do.
    
    -- Georgia O'Keeffe
15. Being a woman has only bothered me in climbing trees.
    
    -- Frances Perkins
16. That is, the wife must care for what the husband cares for if he is to remain resolute.
    
    -- Mary Harris "Mother" Jones
17. When one door of happiness closes, another opens; but often we look so long at the closed door that we do not see the one which has been opened for us.
    
    -- Helen Keller
18. Ask yourself: Have you been kind today? Make kindness your daily modus operandi and change your world.
    
    -- Annie Lennox
19. Keep on beginning and failing. Each time you fail, start all over again, and you will grow stronger until you have accomplished a purpose - not the one you began with perhaps, but one you'll be glad to remember.
    
    -- Anne Sullivan
20. Change your life today. Don't gamble on the future, act now, without delay.
    
    -- Simone De Beauvoir



Florence Nightingale (1820-1910) - "The Lady with the Lamp"

21. I think one's feelings waste themselves in words; they ought all to be distilled into actions which bring results.
    
    -- Florence Nightingale
22. It is the mind that makes the body
    
    -- Sojourner Truth
23. Beauty, to me, is about being comfortable in your own skin. That, or a kick-ass red lipstick.
    
    -- Gwyneth Paltrow
24. There is no good reason why we should not develop and change until the last day we live.
    
    -- Karen Horney
25. I am a mystery to myself.
    
    -- Angelina Grimke
26. Women are early taught that to appear to yield is the only way to govern. 
    
    -- Sarah Moore Grimke
27. For what is done or learned by one class of women becomes, by virtue of their common womanhood, the property of all women.
    
    -- Elizabeth Blackwell
28. It is never to late to be what you might have been.
    
    -- George Eliot
29. One had better die fighting against injustice than die like a dog or a rat in a trap.
    
    -- Ida Bell Wells-Barnett
30. When she stopped conforming to the conventional picture of femininity she finally began to enjoy being a woman.
    
    -- Betty Friedman



Emily Dickinson (1830-1886) - American Poet

31. Dwell in possibility.
    
    -- Emily Dickinson
32. To stand at the edge of the sea, to sense the ebb and flow of the tides, to feel the breath of a mist moving over a great salt marsh, to watch the flight of shore birds that have swept up and down the surf lines of the continents for untold thousands of year, to see the running of the old eels and the young shad to the sea, is to have knowledge of things that are as nearly eternal as any earthly life can be.
    
    -- Rachel Carson
33. Give light and people will find the way.
    
    -- Ella Baker
34. Revolutionaries do not make revolutions. The revolutionaries are those who know when power is lying in the street and then they can pick it up.
    
    -- Hannah Arendt
35. I have found the paradox, that if you love until it hurts, there can be no more hurt, only more love.
    
    -- Mother Teresa
36. Feelings of love and gratitude arise directly and spontaneously in the baby in response to the love and care of his mother.
    
    -- Melanie Klein
37. Don't be so humble, you're not that great.
    
    -- Golda Meir
38. You cannot find peace by avoiding life.
    -- Virginia Woolf
39. The important thing is not what they think of me, but what I think of them.
    
    -- Queen Victoria
40. There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening, that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all time, this expression is unique.
    
    -- Martha Graham



Catherine the Great (1729-1796) - Empress of Russia

41. I praise loudly. I blame softly.
    
    -- Catherine the Great
42. Love makes your soul crawl out from its hiding place. 
    
    -- Zora Neale Hurston
43. There is very little difference between men and women in space.
    -- Helen Sharman
44. When you get into a tight place and everything goes against you, till it seems as though you could not hold on a minute longer, never give up then, for that is just the place and time that the tide will turn.
    -- Harriet Beecher Stowe
45. Freedom is always and exclusively freedom for the one who thinks differently. 
    
    -- Rosa Luxemburg
46. From the first, I made my learning, what little it was, useful every way I could.
    
    -- Mary Mcleod Bethune
47. Reason sits firm and holds the reins, and she will not let the feelings burst away and hurry her to wild chasms. The passions may rage furiously, like true heathens, as they are; and the desires may imagine all sorts of vain things: but judgment shall still have the last word in every argument, and the casting vote in every decision.
    
    -- Charlotte Bronte
48. I've dreamt in my life dreams that have stayed with me ever after, and changed my ideas; they've gone through and through me, like wine through water, and altered the colour of my mind.
    
    -- Emily Bronte
49. No written law has ever been more binding than unwritten custom supported by popular opinion.
    
    -- Carrie Chapman Catt
50. Change happens by listening and then starting a dialogue with the people who are doing something you don't believe is right.
    
    -- Jane Goodall



Joan of Arc (1412-1431) French heroine and Catholic Saint

51. One life is all we have and we live it as we believe in living it. But to sacrifice what you are and to live without belief, that is a fate more terrible than dying.
    
    -- Joan of Arc 
52. The most violent element in society is ignorance.
    
    -- Emma Goldman
53. Women are always being tested...but ultimately, each of us has to define who we are individually and then do the very best job we can to grow into it.
    
    -- Hilary Clinton
54. Fashion fades, only style remains the same.
    
    -- Coco Chanel
55. If it's a good idea, go ahead and do it. It's much easier to apologize than it is to get permission.
    
    -- Grace Murray Hopper
56. If you know you are on the right track, if you have this inner knowledge, then nobody can turn you off. . . no matter what they say.
    
    -- Barbara McClintock
57. Everybody gets so much information all day long that they lose their common sense.
    
    -- Gertrude Stein
58. People tend to forget their duties but remember their rights.
    
    -- Indira Gandhi
59. A woman may not hit a ball stronger than a man, but it is different. I prize that difference.
    
    -- Louise Nevelson
60. Deeds not words.
    
    -- Emmeline Pankhurst



Dorothea Lange (1895-1965) Photographer and photo-journalist

61. This benefit of seeing... can come only if you pause a while, extricate yourself from the maddening mob of quick impressions ceaselessly battering our lives, and look thoughtfully at a quiet image... the viewer must be willing to pause, to look again, to meditate.
    
    -- Dorothea Lange
62. No trumpets sound when the important decisions of our life are made. Destiny is made known silently.
    
    -- Agnes De Mille
63. What is beautiful is good, and who is good will soon be beautiful.- Sappho
64. Loving a child doesn't mean giving in to all his whims; to love him is to bring out the best in him, to teach him to love what is difficult.
    
    -- Nadia Boulanger
65. Exhaust the little moment. Soon it dies. And be it gash or gold it will not come Again in this identical guise.
    
    -- Gwendolyn Brooks
66. The greatest sign of success for a teacher... is to be able to say, "The children are now working as if I did not exist.
    
    -- Maria Montessori
67. Fear is a disease that eats away at logic and makes man inhuman.
    
    -- Marian Anderson
68. I keep my ideals, because in spite of everything I still believe that people are really good at heart.
    
    -- Anne Frank
69. For beautiful eyes, look for the good in others; for beautiful lips, speak only words of kindness; and for poise, walk with the knowledge that you are never alone.
    
    -- Audrey Hepburn
70. Look at a day when you are supremely satisfied at the end. It's not a day when you lounge around doing nothing; it's when you've had everything to do, and you've done it.
    
    -- Margaret Thatcher



Lady Murasaki (c.973-1014) - Novelist, poet and maid of honour in the Imperial Court

71. Though the body moves, the soul may stay behind.
    -- Murasaki Shikibu
72. Where ever I am I always find myself looking out the window wishing I was somewhere else.
    
    -- Angelina Jolie
73. We must live for the few who know and appreciate us, who judge and absolve us, and for whom we have the same affection and indulgence. The rest I look upon as a mere crowd, lively or sad, loyal or corrupt, from whom there is nothing to be expected but fleeting emotions, either pleasant or unpleasant, which leave no trace behind them.
    
    -- Sarah Bernhardt
74. If you do things well, do them better. Be daring, be first, be different, be just.
    
    -- Anita Roddick
75. The most difficult thing is the decision to act, the rest is merely tenacity. The fears are paper tigers. You can do anything you decide to do. You can act to change and control your life; and the procedure , the process is its own reward.
    
    -- Amelia Earheart
76. The loneliest woman in the world is the woman without a close woman friend.
    
    -- Toni Morrison
77. The truth will set you free. But first, it will piss you off.
    
    -- Gloria Steinem
78. Just as women’s bodies are softer than men’s, so their understanding is sharper.
    
    -- Christine de Pisan
79. Work is something you can count on, a trusted, lifelong friend who never deserts you.
    
    -- Margaret Bourke-White
80. Feet, what do I need you for when I have wings to fly?
    
    -- Frida Kahlo



Gabriela Mistral (1889-1957) - Awarded a Nobel Prize in Literature

81. Love beauty; it is the shadow of God on the universe.
    
    -- Gabriela Mistral
82. The truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it.
    
    -- Flannery O'Connor
83. A mistake is simply another way of doing things.
    
    -- Catharine Graham
84. It's a long old road, but I know I'm gonna find the end.
    
    -- Bessie Smith
85. I know that, like every woman of the people, I have more strength than I appear to have.
    
    -- Evita Peron
86. I will not be triumphed over.
    
    -- Cleopatra
87. There are many little ways to enlarge your child's world. Love of books is the best of all.
    
    -- Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis
88. The trick in life is learning how to deal with it.
    
    -- Helen Mirren
89. It matters not what a person is born, but who they choose to be.
    
    -- Joanne Kathleen Rowling 
90. Sometimes it's worse to win a fight than to lose.
    
    -- Billie Holiday



Marilyn Monroe (1926-1962)

91. I don't know who invented high heels, but all women owe him a lot.
    
    -- Marilyn Monroe
92. Temperance is moderation in the things that are good and total abstinence from the things that are foul.
    
    -- Frances Willard
93. Learn to get in touch with the silence within yourself, and know that everything in life has purpose. There are no mistakes, no coincidences, all events are blessings given to us to learn from.
    
    -- Elisabeth Kobler Ross
94. If you have made mistakes, there is always another chance for you. You may have a fresh start any moment you choose, for this thing we call 'failure' is not the falling down, but the staying down.
    
    -- Mary Pickford
95. Through my optimism I naturally prefer and capture the beauty in life.
    
    -- Leni Riefenstahl
96. I never lose sight of the fact that just being is fun.
    
    -- Katharine Hepburn
97. A champion is afraid of losing. Everyone else is afraid of winning.
    
    -- Billie Jean King
98. Only do what your heart tells you.
    -- Princess Diana 
99. In life, all good things come hard, but wisdom is the hardest to come by.
    
    -- Lucille Ball
100. Breathe. Let go. And remind yourself that this very moment is the only one you know you have for sure.
     
     -- Oprah Winfrey

Which quote is your favourite? Have I missed out an important female role model? Please feel free to leave your comments below.

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