Top 120 Kathleen Hanna Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “I’m not going to sit around and be peace and love with somebody’s boot on my neck.”

— Kathleen Hanna

2. “I would much rather be the obnoxious feminist girl than be complicit in my own dehumanization.”

— Kathleen Hanna

3. “I’m more interested in a feminism that ends discrimination for all people. It’s not just about a woman becoming the CEO of a company or something. It’s connected to racism and classism and gender issues that go beyond the binary.”

— Kathleen Hanna

4. “When you speak up about any sense of unfairness or injustice, you’re told that you’re overreacting, you’re too angry, too silly-shut up already. It takes a tremendous amount of fortitude to be able to live in this world as a woman, let alone a woman who wants things to change.”

— Kathleen Hanna

5. “It’s really funny – when I’m depressed or I’m having a hard time, I’ll write really fun stuff. And then when I’m really happy, I write really depressing stuff.”

— Kathleen Hanna

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6. “I won’t stop talking. I am a girl you have no control over. There is not a gag big enough to handle this mouth.”

— Kathleen Hanna

7. “Taking care of yourself is the most important thing.”

— Kathleen Hanna

8. “Don’t get down on yourself that you can’t run a 4K or dance all night long at a fun club. Give yourself a break.”

— Kathleen Hanna

Featured in: Fun Quotes

9. “I’m not a goddess, for crying out loud. I’m a regular person who took feminism – which I have a deep connection to – and mixed it with music, which I really love to do.”

— Kathleen Hanna

10. “Popularity is totally overrated.”

— Kathleen Hanna

11. “While sexism hurts women most intimately, it also damages men severely.”

— Kathleen Hanna

12. “I think open adoption is a great idea, because it allows a relationship between the birth mother and her child so that the kid isn’t like, “Where did I come from?” And to have it be like, “Look, you have a bunch of people who love you.””

— Kathleen Hanna

13. “I wanna be a legend; I wanna be a cult hero. I do!”

— Kathleen Hanna

14. “I hate the attitude of, ‘oh we already have a Lydia Lunch, so we do we need a Bikini Kill.’ Well, there’s like 2 hundered million all-male bands writting ‘baby baby I love you, let me drag you around on my ankle.’ Is that enough already? Duh!”

— Kathleen Hanna

15. “Just because I’m a woman doesn’t mean I’m the same as every other female singer.”

— Kathleen Hanna

16. “Everybody wasn’t always wasted. Why is punk rock about getting wasted? Isn’t it punk rock to be sober and change the world? I thought it was about challenging capitalism? How are you going to challenge capitalism if you’re wasted?”

— Kathleen Hanna

17. “Certain people are like ‘Oh, here come the Feminazis!’ You end up acting 10 times nicer than you even need to be, to be the opposite of the stereotype like ‘You’re the man haters!’ We’re always bending over backwards being extra nice. And I don’t know if being nice is my legacy.”

— Kathleen Hanna

18. “I don’t think I’ve ever had a woman yell that at me, but women have yelled mean things at me as well.”

— Kathleen Hanna

19. “I wanted to make something that I wanted to hear that I wasn’t hearing.”

— Kathleen Hanna

20. “Part of being in a band, being a painter, or starting a nonprofit is that you’re going to make horrible mistakes and look like a total idiot, but you’re never going to create that thing that really connects with people if you don’t fail over and over and over again.”

— Kathleen Hanna

21. “There’s still a lot of misogynist pop music out there, and I think that hearing something that’s so explicitly feminist and so angry – when we’re still growing up in a culture where girls and women are not supposed to be angry – is a real revelation for young women.”

— Kathleen Hanna

22. “You guys are seriously missing out unless you all start listening to girls.”

— Kathleen Hanna

23. “My original goal in the ’90s, after I found feminism and I was the first generation in my family to go to college, was to spread this information that feminism was still very much alive, and that you can’t believe the media telling you that it doesn’t need to exist and that it doesn’t exist.”

— Kathleen Hanna

24. “I made the decision that my contribution needed to be more musical than political. My music was enough, politically. Art matters. Art was enough. My music was enough to say what I had to say.”

— Kathleen Hanna

25. “I know I love sexy surf guitars, I know I love loud snare. I love really simple repeating bass lines, and I love weird mad scientist keyboard sounds.”

— Kathleen Hanna

26. “I think that the Internet is really cool because a lot of young feminists don’t feel like they have to reinvent the wheel.”

— Kathleen Hanna

27. “It’s the idea that we as people can control our own destinies. The government and the corporations, more even than the government, can’t dictate what artwork we’re supposed to like or what comedy we’re supposed to laugh at.”

— Kathleen Hanna

28. “The cool thing about the Internet is that it’s allowing women more access to their own history.”

— Kathleen Hanna

29. “The more people, as you know, are able to be on whatever spectrum of femininity and masculinity they are on at that moment, that opens the door for women to not have to be the opposite of what the supposed traditional male is.”

— Kathleen Hanna

30. “I was never trying to be the voice for anybody else. I was just trying to sing about what I was going through, and was singing about those things specifically because I knew there was an audience not being served.”

— Kathleen Hanna

31. “I don’t appreciate it when women – or men – bandy about these stupid stereotypes about feminism that are age-old, and that are meant to keep people turned off from it. It’s like, “All you have to do is Wikipedia feminism to know that it’s not about man-hating – so shut up.” That makes me annoyed.”

— Kathleen Hanna

32. “I don’t want to waste the precious moments I have, and I’ve felt that way since I was 17. I have to take risks because why else would you be alive? Put your pirate patch on and go on an adventure because you only have one life to live.”

— Kathleen Hanna

33. “I think my biggest fear is dying. Although sometimes my biggest fear is not dying. But yeah, I think health stuff for me is more what I’m afraid of.”

— Kathleen Hanna

34. “Johnny Rotten isn’t punk. Maybe that’s punk to somebody, but these people are participating and challenging the corporations that are telling us what punk is and what good music is.”

— Kathleen Hanna

35. “Jason Mraz, and the new James Blunt song is the worst thing that has ever been created on the face of the earth.”

— Kathleen Hanna

36. “In the ’90s, people wore scrunchies, but it was very uncool in the punk scene.”

— Kathleen Hanna

37. “You learn that the only way to get rock-star power as a girl is to be a groupie and bare your breasts and get chosen for the night. We learn that the only way to get anywhere is through men. And it’s a lie.”

— Kathleen Hanna

38. “I am not Lyme disease, that’s not who I am, I’m still a feminist artist, but this is a part of my story too, and I’m not going to keep it out to look cooler.”

— Kathleen Hanna

39. “I don’t like being in the service industry and having to deal with people yelling at me all the time. McDonald’s was the hardest job I ever had – so I have a lot of respect for people who work in the fast food industry. Because it’s a hard job.”

— Kathleen Hanna

40. “I belive power can be used for good, I don’t think every form of power is absolute evil. I wish I would have stepped in, and I really regret it. And that’s why I really encourage young people who are organizing to speak up.”

— Kathleen Hanna

41. “Internalized sexism that makes us feel like we can’t show ourselves not being perfect.”

— Kathleen Hanna

42. “Feminism is something you do. It’s a verb. It’s what you are. It’s an activity; it’s something you’re actively engaged in.”

— Kathleen Hanna

43. “For whatever reason I just remembered being six years old and my parents leaving the house and trusting me to be alone. I had an older sister, I think she was supposed to babysit me but she immediately ran across the street to her friend’s house.”

— Kathleen Hanna

44. “I think one things that’s really important in the boy community or whatever, or the boy things, is like, to realize that oppression is a two-way street. You know what I mean? That it’s like, white men are really missing out – I don’t wanna say white men are oppressed but...”

— Kathleen Hanna

45. “Sexism and racism and homophobia and classism are so naturalized. All these stereotypes make people think it’s just normal that straight white men are getting all the breaks.”

— Kathleen Hanna

46. “I need to see my friends or I’m gonna go crazy. I’m not gonna stay home and work.”

— Kathleen Hanna

47. “I’m a very binary person in a bad way where it’s like everything is either totally great or totally awful.”

— Kathleen Hanna

48. “My mom and I had secret from my dad that we didn’t think we were stupid, that we didn’t think we needed feminism to be explained to us.”

— Kathleen Hanna

49. “Art revolves around creating something that isn’t there.”

— Kathleen Hanna

50. “Think of something that you can do as opposed to all the things you can’t do – and do that.”

— Kathleen Hanna