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Quotable Quotes from Speakers and Honorees at the 2006 National NOW Conference and Young Feminist Summit

[Sex Trafficking] is on the continuum of the oppression, subjugation and commodification of women by a patriarchal system that in this case makes billions in an accepted industry that feeds off of women's bodies.

Taina Bien Aime
Executive Director, Equality Now

The degradation of women will only begin to lessen the more people take action instead of just talking about it.

Emma Blackman-Mathis
Girls as Grantmakers

Our passion is not enough; we must go out there and do.

Inez Casiano
NOW Founder

The issue of beauty, weight, shape, size remains highly criticized in our culture and it's virtually impossible to find positive reinforcements about healthy women in our culture.

Laurie Cohen
Senior Partner, Ogilvy & Mather's Brand Integration Group

The way I see it, we [advertisers] should always be doing work that does well at doing good all the time. This is not hard.

Brian Collins
Executive Creative Director, Ogilvy & Mather's Brand Integration Group

I believe that all American women should immediately stop paying taxes based on the founding principle that we will not bear taxation without representation. . . . If India can have fifty/fifty, why the hell can't we?

Tyne Daly
Emmy and Tony Award-Winning Actor, Activist

I think in the last 40 years we have changed history more for women, for children and for men than any other social movement in the history of the world.

Karen DeCrow
Past President

Isn't that cool the way you set out to change the world and you end up changing your own life. You want to make the world a better place and you make your world a better place. You start out facing so much resistance and lack of respect and condescension and if you stick to it eventually that transforms into sisterhood, camaraderie, respect and appreciation.

Ani DiFranco
Musician, Vocalist, Songwriter, Activist

See video of Ani DiFranco at the NOW Conference

It's so inspiring to see all of you and to realize that this movement is going to go on forever until we have the masculine and feminine integrated into a harmonious whole and that we there become full persons and that we benefit all life.

Elizabeth Farians
NOW Founder

We have an obligation to stand up for our rights and give a voice to others.

Jettie Fields
Girls as Grantmakers

NOW has been the trunk of the tree of feminism . . . NOW has always been imperfect…but with all our faults…NOW is the organization that did it, NOW got the results.

Muriel Fox
NOW Founder

I am so proud to be here with you to celebrate NOW's 40th anniversary. Forty years of struggle for dignity, for equality, 40 years on the frontline fighting for an end to violence and discrimination, 40 years of working for self-determination for women and the right to make private decisions in private and 40 years of unceasing effort to end poverty, bigotry, and racism, 40 years of changing women's lives.

Kim Gandy
President

It's not just changing ourselves anymore, it's about deciding what kind of world we want to live in.

Aileen Hernandez
NOW Founder and Past President

Out of [the ERA campaign] we built a strong, experienced, pissed off women's movement that is now worldwide and will never be pushed back.

Patricia Ireland
Past President

When you come together as a group, as a force to be reckoned with, you can make a difference and change the world in ways you can never imagine."

Marcia Pappas
President, NOW-NYS

I had never been in a room with so many women who could tell me quite frankly and on deeply personal terms how much my writings had meant in their lives and that was enormously moving.

Alice Rossi
NOW Founder

We're going to this year stop them in South Dakota. We're going to stop them in Mississippi and we're going to throw them out of Congress one by one if we have to.

Eleanor Smeal
Past President

What we have apparently is a small group of people with enormous influence who can overrule good science, who can overrule good health policy, who can overrule an interest in the public health of individuals around the nation.

Dr. Susan Wood
Former Director, Office of Women's Health, Food and Drug Administration