The right words at the right moment can shift everything. Whether you’re navigating burnout, rebuilding confidence, stepping into something new, or simply needing a reminder of your own strength, the quotes below are here to meet you where you are.
This collection of women’s empowerment quotes has been curated by the team at Soul Full Events, a women’s wellness community based in Ontario, Canada. We gather these regularly for the women in our retreats, camps, and online Collective, and we wanted to make them available to everyone.
Bookmark this page. Share what resonates. Print your favorite and tape it to your mirror. These words belong to all of us now.
(Swipe to the left to view other category)
A women’s empowerment quote is more than a pretty sentence. It’s a sentence that gives a woman back to herself.
The most powerful ones tend to share three qualities. They name a real experience women face. They reframe that experience without dismissing it. And they leave the reader feeling more capable, not less. The quotes below have been chosen with that filter in mind.
“I am not what happened to me. I am what I choose to become.”
— Carl Jung (yes, men are fine to include for variety)
“She remembered who she was, and the game changed.”
— Lalah Delia
“I have learned, over the years, that when one’s mind is made up, this diminishes fear.”
— Rosa Parks
“I was taught to strive not because there were any guarantees of success but because the act of striving is in itself the only way to keep faith with life.”
— Madeleine Albright
“The most courageous act is still to think for yourself. Aloud.”
— Coco Chanel
“A woman is like a tea bag — you never know how strong she is until she gets in hot water.”
— Eleanor Roosevelt
“I can be changed by what happens to me. But I refuse to be reduced by it.”
— Maya Angelou
“The question isn’t who’s going to let me; it’s who’s going to stop me.”
— Ayn Rand
“Courage is not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it.”
— Nelson Mandela
“The world needs strong women. Women who will lift and build others, who will love and be loved.”
— Amy Tenney
“Out of suffering have emerged the strongest souls; the most massive characters are seared with scars.”
— Kahlil Gibran
“She stood in the storm, and when the wind did not blow her away, she adjusted her sails.
— Elizabeth Edwards
“You wouldn’t worry so much about what others think of you if you realized how seldom they do.”
— Eleanor Roosevelt
“No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.”
— Eleanor Roosevelt
“I am my own muse. I am the subject I know best. The subject I want to know better.”
— Frida Kahlo
“Owning our story and loving ourselves through that process is the bravest thing that we’ll ever do.”
— Brené Brown
“To love yourself right now, just as you are, is to give yourself heaven. Don’t wait until you die.”
— Alan Cohen
“You alone are enough. You have nothing to prove to anybody.”
— Maya Angelou
“Confidence is not ‘they will like me.’ Confidence is ‘I’ll be fine if they don’t.'”
— Christina Grimmie
“I am not afraid of my truth anymore and I will not omit pieces of myself to make you more comfortable.”
— Alex Elle
“Rest is not idleness, and to lie sometimes on the grass under the trees on a summer’s day is by no means a waste of time.”
— John Lubbock
“Almost everything will work again if you unplug it for a few minutes, including you.”
— Anne Lamott
“It’s not the load that breaks you down, it’s the way you carry it.”
— Lou Holtz
“Self-care is not self-indulgence. It is self-preservation.”
— Audre Lorde
“Rest when you’re weary. Refresh and renew yourself, your body, your mind, your spirit. Then get back to work.”
— Ralph Marston
“Nourishing yourself in a way that helps you blossom in the direction you want to go is attainable, and you are worth the effort.”
— Deborah Day
“Doing nothing is sometimes one of the highest of the duties of man.”
— G.K. Chesterton
“Sometimes the most important thing in a whole day is the rest we take between two deep breaths.”
— Etty Hillesum
“There is no force more powerful than a woman determined to rise.”
— W.E.B. Du Bois
“We are all in this together. Make sure when you are running and gunning you remember to grab the women on the way up.”
— Cynt Marshall
“There is a special place in hell for women who don’t help other women.”
— Madeleine Albright
“Surround yourself with only people who are going to lift you higher.”
— Oprah Winfrey
“I am not free while any woman is unfree, even when her shackles are very different from my own.”
— Audre Lorde
“No woman should be shamed for wanting to be lifted and seen.”
— Unknown
“The most beautiful thing a woman can wear is confidence — and sisterhood amplifies it.”
— Unknown
“You are not a burden. You are a woman in need of support, and that is human.”
— Unknown
“I am not afraid. I was born to do this.”
— Joan of Arc
“Glennon Doyle said it best: We can do hard things.”
— Glennon Doyle
“You are allowed to be both a masterpiece and a work in progress simultaneously.”
— Sophia Bush
“The cave you fear to enter holds the treasure you seek.”
— Joseph Campbell
“Vulnerability is the birthplace of innovation, creativity, and change.”
— Brené Brown
“We do not need magic to change the world. We carry all the power we need inside ourselves already.”
— J.K. Rowling
“Every woman that finally figured out her worth, has picked up her suitcases of pride and boarded a flight to freedom.”
— Shannon L. Alder
“Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away.”
— Maya Angelou
“I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”
— Maya Angelou
“You wanna fly, you got to give up the shit that weighs you down.”
— Toni Morrison
“Daring greatly means the courage to be vulnerable. It means to show up and be seen.”
— Brené Brown
“We are the ones we have been waiting for.”
— June Jordan
“We can do hard things. Not because we are fearless, but because we are brave.”
— Glennon Doyle
“It is not our differences that divide us. It is our inability to recognize, accept, and celebrate those differences.”
— Audre Lorde
“I thought about how there are two kinds of secrets: the ones we keep from others and the ones we keep from ourselves.”
— Anne Lamott
“You are not small. You are not too much. You are exactly enough.”
— Bell Hooks
“Don’t be intimidated by what you don’t know. That can be your greatest strength and ensure that you do things differently from everyone else.”
— Sara Blakely
“It’s not about ideas. It’s about making ideas happen.”
— Scott Belsky
“I never dreamed about success. I worked for it.”
— Estée Lauder
“The ability to learn is the most important quality a leader can have.”
— Sheryl Sandberg
“We need to accept that we won’t always make the right decisions, that we’ll screw up royally sometimes — understanding that failure is not the opposite of success, it’s part of success.”
— Glennon Doyle
“It is not our differences that divide us. It is our inability to recognize, accept, and celebrate those differences.”
— Audre Lorde
“I thought about how there are two kinds of secrets: the ones we keep from others and the ones we keep from ourselves.”
— Arianna Huffington
“The biggest adventure you can take is to live the life of your dreams.”
— Oprah Winfrey
“She believed she could, so she did.”
— R.S. Grey
“Soft heart, strong spine.”
— Unknown
“Become ungovernable.”
— Unknown
“Be the woman you needed when you were younger.”
— Unknown
“I am not lucky. I am deserving.”
— Unknown
“Enough. More than enough. Always.”
— Unknown
“Choose yourself, daily.”
— Unknown
“She made broken look beautiful.”
— Unknown
Quotes are seeds. They only grow when you give them somewhere to land.
Here’s how the women in our community work with them.
Choose a single quote that matches what you’re navigating this month, and let it sink in over weeks. Daily quote consumption tends to wash over you. Seasonal quote anchoring sticks.
Mirror, journal cover, lock screen, fridge. Physical placement beats digital saves every time.
Share the quote with one trusted woman in your life and tell her why it landed. The act of speaking it out loud cements it.
Take any quote on this page and ask yourself: “Where is this true for me right now? Where am I resisting it?” Ten minutes of writing will do more than ten readings.
Maya Angelou, Brené Brown, Michelle Obama, Eleanor Roosevelt, Oprah Winfrey, Glennon Doyle, and Audre Lorde are among the most widely quoted women on empowerment, resilience, and self-worth.
A quote is someone else’s truth offered to you. An affirmation is your own truth, spoken in the first person, repeated until your nervous system believes it. Both are useful. Quotes inspire. Affirmations install.
Choose one quote that names what you’re feeling and one that points toward what you need. Keep them visible. Reread them in moments when you’re tempted to push past your limits. Quotes can be circuit breakers between exhaustion and collapse.
Yes, but indirectly. Quotes don’t change your circumstances. They change the meaning you assign to them, which is what shifts the felt experience. Research on cognitive reframing supports this.
We publish a free library of women’s empowerment resources including affirmations, journal prompts, self-care guides, and burnout recovery support. We also run in-person retreats and an online Collective for women across Ontario and beyond.
If these quotes stirred something in you, you’re not alone. The women in our community come to Soul Full Events for exactly this reason. They’ve read the quotes. They’ve saved the posts. And they’ve reached a point where the words alone aren’t enough.
Our women’s wellness retreats in Ontario, our weekend camps, and our online Soul Full Woman Collective are built for women who are ready to move from inspiration to embodiment.
