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Top 150 Naomi Wolf Quotes (2025 Update)
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Naomi Wolf Quote: “Since Madonna is positioned as always ‘cooler than thou,’ we all are primed for schadenfreude if something in her fabulous life goes amiss.”

101. “Since Madonna is positioned as always ‘cooler than thou,’ we all are primed for schadenfreude if something in her fabulous life goes amiss.”

Naomi Wolf Quote: “A man’s right to confer judgment on any woman’s beauty while remaining himself unjudged is beyond scrutiny because it is thought of as God-given.”

102. “A man’s right to confer judgment on any woman’s beauty while remaining himself unjudged is beyond scrutiny because it is thought of as God-given.”

Naomi Wolf Quote: “My job is to notice echoes and notice resonances. Scientists are not supposed to do the same thing that cultural critics do.”

103. “My job is to notice echoes and notice resonances. Scientists are not supposed to do the same thing that cultural critics do.”

Naomi Wolf Quote: “We need to insist on making culture out of our desire: making paintings, novels, plays and films potent and seductive and authentic enough to undermine and overwhelm the Iron Maiden.”

104. “We need to insist on making culture out of our desire: making paintings, novels, plays and films potent and seductive and authentic enough to undermine and overwhelm the Iron Maiden.”

Naomi Wolf Quote: “Even Barbie has been redesigned with a more realistic body type and now comes in many colors. Looking around, there is a bit more room today to be oneself.”

105. “Even Barbie has been redesigned with a more realistic body type and now comes in many colors. Looking around, there is a bit more room today to be oneself.”

Naomi Wolf Quote: “The Victorian woman became her ovaries, as today’s woman has become her “beauty.” Her reproductive value, as the “aesthetic” value of her face and body today, “came to be seen as a sacred trust, one that she must constantly guard in the interest of her race”.”

106. “The Victorian woman became her ovaries, as today’s woman has become her “beauty.” Her reproductive value, as the “aesthetic” value of her face and body today, “came to be seen as a sacred trust, one that she must constantly guard in the interest of her race”.”

Naomi Wolf Quote: “This point, where beauty forms the bridge between women and institutions, is what women are taught to seize upon, and is then used as proof that women themselves are finally to blame. But to make herself grasp this straw, a woman has to surpress what she knows: that the powerful ask for women to display themselves in this way.”

107. “This point, where beauty forms the bridge between women and institutions, is what women are taught to seize upon, and is then used as proof that women themselves are finally to blame. But to make herself grasp this straw, a woman has to surpress what she knows: that the powerful ask for women to display themselves in this way.”

Naomi Wolf Quote: “What editors are obliged to appear to say that.”

108. “What editors are obliged to appear to say that.”

Naomi Wolf Quote: “The inversion of female sexuality keeps women from being in control of their own sexual experience. One trouble with soft-core sexual imagery aimed at young men is that the women photographed are not actually responding sexually to anything: young men grow up trained to eroticize images that teach them nothing about female desire. Nor are young women taught to eroticize female desire. Both men and women, then, tend to eroticize only the woman’s body and the man’s desire.”

109. “The inversion of female sexuality keeps women from being in control of their own sexual experience. One trouble with soft-core sexual imagery aimed at young men is that the women photographed are not actually responding sexually to anything: young men grow up trained to eroticize images that teach them nothing about female desire. Nor are young women taught to eroticize female desire. Both men and women, then, tend to eroticize only the woman’s body and the man’s desire.”

Naomi Wolf Quote: “An essential paradox of the female condition is that for women to really be free, we have to understand the ways in which nature designed us to be attached to and dependent upon love, connection, intimacy, and the right kind of Eros in the hands of the right kind of man or woman.”

110. “An essential paradox of the female condition is that for women to really be free, we have to understand the ways in which nature designed us to be attached to and dependent upon love, connection, intimacy, and the right kind of Eros in the hands of the right kind of man or woman.”

Naomi Wolf Quote: “If women cannot eat the same food as men, we cannot experience equal status in the community. As long as women are asked to bring a self-denying mentality to the communal table, it will never be round, men and women seated together; but the same traditional hierarchical dais, with a folding table for women at the foot.”

111. “If women cannot eat the same food as men, we cannot experience equal status in the community. As long as women are asked to bring a self-denying mentality to the communal table, it will never be round, men and women seated together; but the same traditional hierarchical dais, with a folding table for women at the foot.”

Naomi Wolf Quote: “Beauty” today is what the female orgasm used to be: something given to women by men, if they submitted to their feminine role and were lucky.”

112. “Beauty” today is what the female orgasm used to be: something given to women by men, if they submitted to their feminine role and were lucky.”

Naomi Wolf Quote: “Societies tell themselves necessary fictions in the same way that individuals and families do. Henrik Ibsen called them “vital lies,” and psychologist Daniel Goleman describes them working the same way on the social level that they do within families: “The collusion is maintained by directing attention away from the fearsome fact, or by repackaging its meaning in an acceptable format.” The costs of these social blind spots, he writes, are destructive communal illusions.”

113. “Societies tell themselves necessary fictions in the same way that individuals and families do. Henrik Ibsen called them “vital lies,” and psychologist Daniel Goleman describes them working the same way on the social level that they do within families: “The collusion is maintained by directing attention away from the fearsome fact, or by repackaging its meaning in an acceptable format.” The costs of these social blind spots, he writes, are destructive communal illusions.”

Naomi Wolf Quote: “Men are only in sexual competition when they are competing sexually, but the myth puts women in “sexual” competition in every situation. Competition for a specific sexual partner is rare; since it is not usually a competition “for men,” it is not biologically inevitable.”

114. “Men are only in sexual competition when they are competing sexually, but the myth puts women in “sexual” competition in every situation. Competition for a specific sexual partner is rare; since it is not usually a competition “for men,” it is not biologically inevitable.”

Naomi Wolf Quote: “Religious beliefs had little or no effect on a man’s sexual pleasure, but could slice as powerfully as the circumcision knife into a woman’s enjoyment, undermining with guilt and shame any pleasure she might otherwise experience.”

115. “Religious beliefs had little or no effect on a man’s sexual pleasure, but could slice as powerfully as the circumcision knife into a woman’s enjoyment, undermining with guilt and shame any pleasure she might otherwise experience.”

Naomi Wolf Quote: “In studies of body self-perception, women regularly overestimate their body size; in a study of economic self-perception, they regularly underestimate their business expenses. The point is that the two misperceptions are causally related. By valuing women’s skills at artificially low levels and tying their physical value into the workplace, the market protects its pool of cheap female labor.”

116. “In studies of body self-perception, women regularly overestimate their body size; in a study of economic self-perception, they regularly underestimate their business expenses. The point is that the two misperceptions are causally related. By valuing women’s skills at artificially low levels and tying their physical value into the workplace, the market protects its pool of cheap female labor.”

Naomi Wolf Quote: “It is dead easy to become an anorexic.”

117. “It is dead easy to become an anorexic.”

Naomi Wolf Quote: “Stress affects each gender differently. In a kind of tragic misalignment, during a fight men tend to get “flooded” with stress hormones in a way that leads them to long to shut down, withdraw, and detach – the “flight or fight” response to adrenaline – in order to regain neuroendocrine equilibrium; whereas women react to the same stress by needing to talk more and connect more – the “tend and befriend” response, which lowers their own stress levels.”

118. “Stress affects each gender differently. In a kind of tragic misalignment, during a fight men tend to get “flooded” with stress hormones in a way that leads them to long to shut down, withdraw, and detach – the “flight or fight” response to adrenaline – in order to regain neuroendocrine equilibrium; whereas women react to the same stress by needing to talk more and connect more – the “tend and befriend” response, which lowers their own stress levels.”

Naomi Wolf Quote: “Beauty” is not universal or changeless, though the West pretends that all ideals of female beauty stem from one Platonic Ideal Woman; the Maori admire a fat vulva, and the Padung, droopy breasts.”

119. “Beauty” is not universal or changeless, though the West pretends that all ideals of female beauty stem from one Platonic Ideal Woman; the Maori admire a fat vulva, and the Padung, droopy breasts.”

Naomi Wolf Quote: “Women must claim anorexia as political damage done to us by a social order that considers our destruction insignificant because of what we are – less. We should identify it as Jews identify the death camps, as homosexuals identify AIDS: as a disgrace that is not our own, but that of an inhumane social order.”

120. “Women must claim anorexia as political damage done to us by a social order that considers our destruction insignificant because of what we are – less. We should identify it as Jews identify the death camps, as homosexuals identify AIDS: as a disgrace that is not our own, but that of an inhumane social order.”

Naomi Wolf Quote: “It is inconceivable to the dominant culture that it should respect as a political allegiance, as deep as any ethnic or racial pride, a woman’s determination to show her loyalty – in the face of a beauty myth as powerful as myths about white supremacy – to her age, her shape, her self, her life.”

121. “It is inconceivable to the dominant culture that it should respect as a political allegiance, as deep as any ethnic or racial pride, a woman’s determination to show her loyalty – in the face of a beauty myth as powerful as myths about white supremacy – to her age, her shape, her self, her life.”

Naomi Wolf Quote: “Women’s magazines for over a century have been one of the most powerful agents for changing women’s roles, and throughout that time – today more than ever – they have consistently glamorized whatever the economy, their advertisers, and, during wartime, the government, needed at that time from women.”

122. “Women’s magazines for over a century have been one of the most powerful agents for changing women’s roles, and throughout that time – today more than ever – they have consistently glamorized whatever the economy, their advertisers, and, during wartime, the government, needed at that time from women.”

Naomi Wolf Quote: “The job market refined the beauty myth as a way to legitimize employment discrimination against women.”

123. “The job market refined the beauty myth as a way to legitimize employment discrimination against women.”

Naomi Wolf Quote: “Recent research consistently shows that inside the majority of the West’s controlled, attractive, successful working women, there is a secret “underlife” poisoning our freedom; infused with notions of beauty, it is a dark vein of self-hatred, physical obsessions, terror of aging, and dread of lost control.”

124. “Recent research consistently shows that inside the majority of the West’s controlled, attractive, successful working women, there is a secret “underlife” poisoning our freedom; infused with notions of beauty, it is a dark vein of self-hatred, physical obsessions, terror of aging, and dread of lost control.”

Naomi Wolf Quote: “A woman-loving definition of beauty supplants desperation with play, narcissism with self-love, dismemberment with wholeness, absence with presence, stillness with animation. It admits radiance: light coming out of the face and the body, rather than a spotlight on the body, dimming the self. It is sexual, various, and surprising. We will be able to see it in others and not be frightened, and able at last to see it in ourselves.”

125. “A woman-loving definition of beauty supplants desperation with play, narcissism with self-love, dismemberment with wholeness, absence with presence, stillness with animation. It admits radiance: light coming out of the face and the body, rather than a spotlight on the body, dimming the self. It is sexual, various, and surprising. We will be able to see it in others and not be frightened, and able at last to see it in ourselves.”

Naomi Wolf Quote: “The modern hallucination in which women are trapped or trap themselves is similarly rigid, cruel, and euphemistically painted. Contemporary culture directs attention to imagery of the Iron Maiden, while censoring real women’s faces and bodies.”

126. “The modern hallucination in which women are trapped or trap themselves is similarly rigid, cruel, and euphemistically painted. Contemporary culture directs attention to imagery of the Iron Maiden, while censoring real women’s faces and bodies.”

Naomi Wolf Quote: “Of course, men don’t age any better physically. They age better only in terms of social status. We misperceive in this way since our eyes are trained to see time as a flaw on women’s faces where it is a mark of character on men’s.”

127. “Of course, men don’t age any better physically. They age better only in terms of social status. We misperceive in this way since our eyes are trained to see time as a flaw on women’s faces where it is a mark of character on men’s.”

Naomi Wolf Quote: “An employer can’t prove an employee incompetent simply by announcing that she is. But because “beauty” lives so deep in the psyche, where sexuality mingles with self-esteem, and since it has been usefully defined as something that is continually bestowed from the outside and can always be taken away, to tell a woman she is ugly can make her feel ugly, act ugly, and, as far as her experience is concerned, be ugly, in the place where feeling beautiful keeps her whole.”

128. “An employer can’t prove an employee incompetent simply by announcing that she is. But because “beauty” lives so deep in the psyche, where sexuality mingles with self-esteem, and since it has been usefully defined as something that is continually bestowed from the outside and can always be taken away, to tell a woman she is ugly can make her feel ugly, act ugly, and, as far as her experience is concerned, be ugly, in the place where feeling beautiful keeps her whole.”

Naomi Wolf Quote: “Most of our assumptions about the way women have always thought about “beauty” date from no earlier than the 1830s, when the cult of domesticity was first consolidated and the beauty index invented.”

129. “Most of our assumptions about the way women have always thought about “beauty” date from no earlier than the 1830s, when the cult of domesticity was first consolidated and the beauty index invented.”

Naomi Wolf Quote: “For women to be urged to think continually of beauty’s fragility and transcience is a way to try to keep us subservient, by maintaining in us a fatalism that has not been part of Western men’s thinking since the Renaissance.”

130. “For women to be urged to think continually of beauty’s fragility and transcience is a way to try to keep us subservient, by maintaining in us a fatalism that has not been part of Western men’s thinking since the Renaissance.”

Naomi Wolf Quote: “What women look like is considered important because what we say is not.”

131. “What women look like is considered important because what we say is not.”

Naomi Wolf Quote: “When a woman looks at a man, she can physically dislike the idea of his height, his coloring, his shape. But after she has liked him and loved him, she would not want him to look any other way: For many women, the body appears to grow beautiful and erotic as they grow to like the person in it. The actual body, the smell, the feel, the voice and movement, becomes charged with heat through the desirable person who animates it.”

132. “When a woman looks at a man, she can physically dislike the idea of his height, his coloring, his shape. But after she has liked him and loved him, she would not want him to look any other way: For many women, the body appears to grow beautiful and erotic as they grow to like the person in it. The actual body, the smell, the feel, the voice and movement, becomes charged with heat through the desirable person who animates it.”

Naomi Wolf Quote: “It is all impersonal; it is political.”

133. “It is all impersonal; it is political.”

Naomi Wolf Quote: “A girl learns that stories happen to “beautiful” women, whether they are interesting or not. And, interesting or not, stories do not happen to women who are not “beautiful”.”

134. “A girl learns that stories happen to “beautiful” women, whether they are interesting or not. And, interesting or not, stories do not happen to women who are not “beautiful”.”

Naomi Wolf Quote: “As a child, you sat in a circle around your teacher and looked at her face as she read a story, and you felt the magic of human narrative in a collective context.”

135. “As a child, you sat in a circle around your teacher and looked at her face as she read a story, and you felt the magic of human narrative in a collective context.”

Naomi Wolf Quote: “Anorexics are sure they are embarked on a quest that no one else can understand by looking at them. Self-denial can lock women into a smug and critical condescension to other, less devout women.”

136. “Anorexics are sure they are embarked on a quest that no one else can understand by looking at them. Self-denial can lock women into a smug and critical condescension to other, less devout women.”

Naomi Wolf Quote: “By simply dropping the official weight one stone below most women’s natural level, and redefining a woman’s womanly shape as by definition “too fat,” a wave of self-hatred swept over First World women, a reactionary psychology was perfected, and a major industry was born. It suavely countered the historical groundswell of female success with a mass conviction of female failure, a failure defined as implicit in womanhood itself.”

137. “By simply dropping the official weight one stone below most women’s natural level, and redefining a woman’s womanly shape as by definition “too fat,” a wave of self-hatred swept over First World women, a reactionary psychology was perfected, and a major industry was born. It suavely countered the historical groundswell of female success with a mass conviction of female failure, a failure defined as implicit in womanhood itself.”

Naomi Wolf Quote: “If a woman’s sexual sense of self has centered on pain as far back as the record goes, who is she without it? If suffering is beauty and beauty is love, she cannot be sure she will be loved if she does not suffer. It is hard, because of such conditioning, to envisage a female body free of pain and still desirable.”

138. “If a woman’s sexual sense of self has centered on pain as far back as the record goes, who is she without it? If suffering is beauty and beauty is love, she cannot be sure she will be loved if she does not suffer. It is hard, because of such conditioning, to envisage a female body free of pain and still desirable.”

Naomi Wolf Quote: “Advertisers are the West’s corteous censors. They blur the line between editorial freedom and the demands of the marketplace.”

139. “Advertisers are the West’s corteous censors. They blur the line between editorial freedom and the demands of the marketplace.”

Naomi Wolf Quote: “Reproductive rights gave Western women control over our own bodies; the weight of fashion models plummeted to 23 percent below that of ordinary women, eating disorders rose exponentially, and a mass neurosis was promoted that used food and weight to strip women of that sense of control.”

140. “Reproductive rights gave Western women control over our own bodies; the weight of fashion models plummeted to 23 percent below that of ordinary women, eating disorders rose exponentially, and a mass neurosis was promoted that used food and weight to strip women of that sense of control.”

Naomi Wolf Quote: “Unfortunately, since the media routinely give accounts of women’s appearance in a way that trivializes or discredits what they say, women reading or watching are routinely dissuaded from identifying with women in the public eye – the ultimate anti-feminist goal of the beauty myth.”

141. “Unfortunately, since the media routinely give accounts of women’s appearance in a way that trivializes or discredits what they say, women reading or watching are routinely dissuaded from identifying with women in the public eye – the ultimate anti-feminist goal of the beauty myth.”

Naomi Wolf Quote: “The soulless blood-rush of synthesized climax over a repetitive backbeat made disco the perfect music by which to score with a stranger.”

142. “The soulless blood-rush of synthesized climax over a repetitive backbeat made disco the perfect music by which to score with a stranger.”

Naomi Wolf Quote: “The most emblematic working women in the West could be visible if they were “beautiful,” even if they were bad at their work; they could be good at their work and “beautiful” and therefore visible, but get no credit for merit; or they could be good and “unbeautiful” and therefore invisible, so their merit did them no good.”

143. “The most emblematic working women in the West could be visible if they were “beautiful,” even if they were bad at their work; they could be good at their work and “beautiful” and therefore visible, but get no credit for merit; or they could be good and “unbeautiful” and therefore invisible, so their merit did them no good.”

Naomi Wolf Quote: “The problem with cosmetics exists only when women feel invisible or inadequate without them. The problem with working out exists only if women hate ourselves when we don’t. When a woman is forced to adorn herself to buy a hearing, when she needs her grooming in order to protect her identity, when she goes hungry in order to keep her job, when she must attract a lover so that she can take care of her children, that is exactly what makes ‘beauty’ hurt.”

144. “The problem with cosmetics exists only when women feel invisible or inadequate without them. The problem with working out exists only if women hate ourselves when we don’t. When a woman is forced to adorn herself to buy a hearing, when she needs her grooming in order to protect her identity, when she goes hungry in order to keep her job, when she must attract a lover so that she can take care of her children, that is exactly what makes ‘beauty’ hurt.”

Naomi Wolf Quote: “Are women beautiful or aren’t we?”

145. “Are women beautiful or aren’t we?”

Naomi Wolf Quote: “An economy that depends on slavery needs to promote images of slaves that “justify” the institution of slavery. Western economies are absolutely dependent now on the continued underpayment of women. An ideology that makes women feel “worth less” was urgently needed to counteract the way feminism had begun to make us feel worth more.”

146. “An economy that depends on slavery needs to promote images of slaves that “justify” the institution of slavery. Western economies are absolutely dependent now on the continued underpayment of women. An ideology that makes women feel “worth less” was urgently needed to counteract the way feminism had begun to make us feel worth more.”

Naomi Wolf Quote: “As she put it more wearily in a later interview in New Woman, “Advertisers don’t believe in female opinion makers.” Steinem believes that it’s the advertisers who’ve got to change. And she believes they will, though perhaps not in her lifetime.”

147. “As she put it more wearily in a later interview in New Woman, “Advertisers don’t believe in female opinion makers.” Steinem believes that it’s the advertisers who’ve got to change. And she believes they will, though perhaps not in her lifetime.”

Naomi Wolf Quote: “How can woman believe in merit in a reality like this? A job market that rewards her indirectly as if she were selling her body is simply perpetuating the traditional main employment options for women – compulsory marriage or prostitution – more politely and for half the pay.”

148. “How can woman believe in merit in a reality like this? A job market that rewards her indirectly as if she were selling her body is simply perpetuating the traditional main employment options for women – compulsory marriage or prostitution – more politely and for half the pay.”

Naomi Wolf Quote: “It profits women little if we gain the whole world only to fear ourselves.”

149. “It profits women little if we gain the whole world only to fear ourselves.”

Naomi Wolf Quote: “We are relentlessly encouraged by tech companies to think of their technology as enabling human processes, making human actions more efficient. Do your bookkeeping better! Find a restaurant more easily! Talk to a loved one far away! In fact, the business models of most tech giants, and especially social media giants, most thrive when they have replaced human experience and human actions. And now they have moved on to suppressing human experience and human actions.”

150. “We are relentlessly encouraged by tech companies to think of their technology as enabling human processes, making human actions more efficient. Do your bookkeeping better! Find a restaurant more easily! Talk to a loved one far away! In fact, the business models of most tech giants, and especially social media giants, most thrive when they have replaced human experience and human actions. And now they have moved on to suppressing human experience and human actions.”

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