8 Motivational Quotes For Women By Women

This article originally appeared on Medium.com. Written by Joanne Tombrakos.

I love quotes.

Especially the inspiring kind. The ones that make me stop and pause and I can feel resonating within me. I love quotes so much that I keep a special notebook in which I write them down and can go to when I need a little inspiration to move me forward.

So I’m always looking for new ones to add to the collection. Which is how I happened upon a list of 8 Motivational Quotes for 2016 in Entrepreneur magazine.

It wasn’t a list that caused me to open my notebook and jot in a new entry. But I did notice one thing.

Not one quote was from a woman.

Not. A. One.

Every single quote was something a man said.

The feminist in me was provoked.

How could a national magazine not even find one token quote from a woman that was motivating enough to be included on this list?

Which for the record — was not such a motivating list.

Then I remembered two of my friend Gloria Feldt’s list of nine power tools.

#3 Use What You’ve Got.

#8 Employ Every Medium.

Now I was inspired and motivated — to write my own list of eight quotes — every one by a woman!

Without leaps of imagination, or dreaming, we lose the excitement of possibilities. Dreaming, after all, is a form of planning. — Gloria Steinem

I love this one so much — mostly because dreaming so often is dismissed as foolish — and it shouldn’t be. Without a dream, there is no vision. Without either, what good is a plan of action?

Ask for what you want and be prepared to get it. — Maya Angelou

We forget to ask. Sounds so simple but it’s a lesson I learned in my freshman years of sales. If I wanted to close a deal, I needed to ask for the order. Even if the answer was no, at least I knew where I stood. What I love about this quote so much is that it also implies the necessary ingredient in getting the “order” — whatever that might be — is that we must be open to receiving it. (ps. I still sometimes forget to ask.)

Wanna fly, you got to give up the stuff that weighs you down. — Toni Morrison

Easier said than done, but so true. For me sometimes that “stuff’ weighing me down is me standing in my own way.

In order to be irreplaceable, one must always be different. — Coco Chanel

Being like everyone else is so much easier and safer but all that sameness is also a big yawn. It’s our differences that make us interesting and “irreplaceable” especially when we remember to own them as Chanel so beautifully did.

Don’t compromise yourself. You are all you’ve got. — Janis Joplin

As women, we’re the great compromisers. It’s in our DNA. But we fall short when it’s ourselves that we’re compromising. This one reminds me not to do that.

And the trouble is, if you don’t risk anything, you risk even more. — Erica Jong

Not trying anything different. Staying safe. Much riskier than taking a risk. Having taken some big risks of my own in recent years, this one reminds me why I have.

Embrace the mess. — Nora Ephron

This is a tough one for me some days — but embracing the mess rather than fighting it as I can be prone to do — I have found is the first step to getting through it.