Jane fonda quotes

Look what scares you in the face and try to understand it. Empathy is revolutionary.

I was in my mid-40s. I was a bulimic, and I realized if I continue with this addiction of mine, I will not be able to continue doing my life. The older you get the more damage it does; it takes longer to recover from a binge. And it was very hard.

But the whole point of liberation is that you get out. Restructure your life. Act by yourself.

Prostitutes are the inevitable product of a society that places ultimate importance on money, possessions, and competition.

Who am I? I'm a survivor. I'm a woman with tremendous inner resources and resilience. I care about people. I believe in 'Do unto others as you would have others do unto you,' and I live by that. I am becoming authentic, and that's important to me. I have surpassed both my parents in terms of emotional stability, happiness and well-being. And I'm a lucky woman. I've deserved my luck.

Good physical condition is protection. Our strength comes from our body.

I left acting for 15 years, and I think it's really nice to have another life. I took too much for granted when I was younger.

We all, in fact, carry so many people inside us; the only difference is that actors get paid for it, and we sort of spruce it up a bit.

Don't give up. There are lessons to be learned even in the most horrendous pain. And you don't know that when you're young.

Go for the burn! Sweat!

My life is a stairway to heaven, not a 'decline into decrepitude.

No distractions. Center yourself. This is your time.

You don't have to have a man! Masturbation is especially useful for older women, because men die sooner than we do. And so: Use it or lose it. It's not critical that every woman wants to stay juiced up. But if they do, it's perfectly fine. It's a lot easier to feel sexy and perform safely when you're flexible and have a certain amount of strength left. If you keep moving - walking, staying strong, doing squats - then having sex is both safer and more pleasurable, and you feel more empowered and better about yourself.

I vowed I wouldn't get married until someone gave me one good reason to. No one ever did - but I got married anyway.

Christ was the first feminist and because of that I've learned from his teaching to call myself a Christian feminist, adding that her faith is not a matter of traditions and dogmas but, rather, a spiritual experience.

We understand that Nixon's aggression against Vietnam is a racist aggression, that the American war in Vietnam is a racist war, a white man's war...We deplore that you are being used as cannon fodder for U.S. imperialism. We've seen photographs of American bombs and antipersonnel weapons being dropped, wantonly, accidentally perhaps, on your heads, on the heads of your comrades.

It's much more important to be interested than to be interesting.

I confess. If the law had been appiled to me properly for what I did in Vietnam, I'd have been convicted for high treason.

If you understood what communism was, you would hope, you would pray on your knees that we would some day become communist. . . . I, a socialist, think that we should strive toward a socialist society, all the way to communism.

You can do yoga and be thinking about going shopping. The goal is kind of like meditation, is to be totally present in your body in the moment. That's when the most profound effects of yoga can happen. That's what I urge people to try to do. It's very important to be in your body.

Instead of drifting along like a leaf in a river, understand who you are and how you come across to people and what kind of an impact you have on the people around you and the community around you and the world, so that when you go out, you can feel you have made a positive difference.

When I'm in Canada, I feel this is what the world should be like.

I think the Internet and technology in general has changed everything. We can see it overseas even more with the Arab Spring and so forth.

When you can't remember why you're hurt, that's when you're healed. When you have to work real hard to re-create the pain, and you can't quite get there, that's when you're better.

Relationships are the oxygen of the psyche.

I finally got it: empower girls and everything changes.

Stay curious, keep learning and keep growing. And always strive to be more interested than interesting.

When I was at the age when you were supposed to be glamorous if you were a movie star, I wasn't.

Enjoyable does not necessarily mean easy.

Revolution is an act of love; we are the children of revolution, born to be rebels. It runs in our blood.

You don’t learn from successes; you don’t learn from awards; you don’t learn from celebrity; you only learn from wounds and scars and mistakes and failures. And that’s the truth.

Winning means some kind of approval of the Establishment which means people will more readily accept me, may be less frightened of me and other people who speak out.

I think what's happening in the world - there's nothing more dangerous than a wounded beast, and the patriarchy is wounded.

It's better to be interested than interesting.

I never was a hippie! I went to India because so many friends like Mia Farrow and The Beatles were going there to discover truth. And so I went and trekked through India by myself, but instead of discovering truth, I wanted to join the Peace Corps.

If we as a nation are to break the cycle of poverty, crime and the growing underclass of young people ill equipped to be productive citizens, we need to not only implement effective programs to prevent teen pregnancy, but we must also help those who have already given birth so that they become effective, nurturing, bonding parents.

So much is made of good, strong roles for women. Actually, it's really interesting playing vul­nerable people as well.

As I saw my 60th birthday approaching, I thought,What did 60 mean to me? I figured I'd probably live until I'm about 90, which meant that I was at the beginning of what I call my third act. As an actress, I know how important the third act is. It makes sense of the first and second acts. You can have first and second acts that are interesting, but you don't know what they mean. Then a good third act pulls it all together. And so I knew that, because I sat by my father's side over the long months when he was dying.

In this country, the only way a minority can get anything done is to make a little noise.

You can do one of two things; just shut up, which is something I don't find easy, or learn an awful lot very fast, which is what I tried to do.

The capacity of young people to persevere, even under the most adverse conditions, never ceases to amaze me.

If our work is stimulating and rewarding, if it pushes us to grow...we become more valuable human beings.

A man has every season while a woman only has the right to spring.

When a child enters the world through you, it alters everything on a psychic, psychological and purely practical level.

An exercise outfit helps because it sets this time apart from the rest of your day and makes it matter more.

Ultimately we must concern ourselves with pulling out by its roots the decadence that controls our culture, the profit motive that controls our culture.

Aging is a staircase - the upward ascension of the human spirit, bringing us into wisdom, wholeness and authenticity. As you may know, the entire world operates on a universal law: entropy, the second law of thermodynamics. Entropy means that everything in the world, everything, is in a state of decline and decay, the arch. There's only one exception to this universal law, and that is the human spirit, which can continue to evolve upwards.

So I grew up feeling that I wasn't good enough, and that no-one would love me unless I was perfect. But no-one's perfect, we're not meant to be perfect. We're meant to be complete. But it's hard to be complete if you're trying to be perfect, so you kind of become disembodied. And I spent a lot of my life that way.""And if you don't own your strength... Women like me tend to always look over their shoulder to see who... "Who's the leader? Who's the smart one?" Never thinking it might be ME. Took a long time for me to get over that.

When you know in your heart why you did something, and you feel and you know that in spite of all the controversy that it was right, doesn't matter.

My position on the POW issue has been widely misquoted and taken out of context. What I originally said and have continued to say is that the POW's are lying if they assert it was North Vietnamese policy to torture American Prisoners.

I found that you're more powerful when talking from your soul.

To make the revolution in the United States is a slow day by day job that requires patience and discipline. It is the only way to make it. . . . All I know is that despite the fact that I am one of the people who benefit from a capitalist society, I find that any system which exploits other people cannot and should not exist.

If you allow yourself, you can become stronger in the very places that you've been broken.

Working in Hollywood does give one a certain expertise in the field of prostitution.

The secret of losing weight is patience.

The bond between a parent and child is the primary bond, the foundation for the rest of the child's life. The presence or absence of this bond determines much about the child's resiliency and what kind of adult they will grow up to be.

We've got to establish a socialistic economic structure that will limit private, profit-oriented businesses.

The more you treat yourself positively, the less you'll want or need to be negative.

We don't need to be perfect. We're not supposed to be perfect; we're supposed to be complete. And you can't be complete if you're trying to be perfect.

I never wanted to be an actor. My dad was an actor, and he never brought joy home, so I didn't view it as something that I would want to do. But I got fired as a secretary, and then I started studying, I started doing it just to earn money. And it took me a long time to learn to love it. And what I loved was telling a story. I tried to avoid making plays or films that weren't telling a story that I felt was important. I discovered in the process that it makes you more empathic because you have to enter someone else's reality and learn to see through many other people's eyes.

You shouldn't give up. For a while, you have to stay close to the wall and be careful who you spend time with and take care of yourself.

You're more powerful when talking from your soul.

The bravest soldiers aren't unafraid, but they're the ones who are able to harness their fear on behalf of courage.

The people who did you wrong or who didn't quite know how to show up, you forgive them. And forgiving them allows you to forgive yourself too.

Perfection is a toxic desire. We are not supposed to be perfect. The challenge is not to be perfect, it's to be whole.

The sex is better and I understand life better. I don't want to be young again.

We are living on average today 34 years longer than our great-grandparents did.

Being by myself, that is to say, without a man - it's been a long time - is allowing me to know what it feels like - to live in my own skin, to remember what I miss and don't miss about a relationship.

A good many dramatic situations begin with screaming.

Whatever kind of workout you settle on, it should include the Big Three of exercise for health and fitness-aerobics, resistance exercises, and stretching.

You think you're being broken but you're really being broken open...and that's where the healing happens, in those broken places...if you'll allow it.

I'm an assistant storyteller. It's like being a waiter or a gas-station attendant, but I'm waiting on six million people a week, if I'm lucky.

I never would've imagined in the first part of my life that I could've stood up and said anything. The war in Vietnam changed me. I was so angry. Some of my speeches probably weren't well considered.

Someone once said that under the bell jar of compliance, the only thing that blooms is rage.

I was shocked into the realization that I myself had played an unwitting role as a movie star and sex symbol in perpetrating the stereotypes that affected women all over the world.

Refuse to be afraid that we will no longer be considered attractive and acceptable when we are strong.

The challenge is not to be perfect. It’s to be whole.

How would you like to have a father who keeps getting younger looking every year? Do you realize what that can do to a woman?

It's never too late - never too late to start over, never too late to be happy.

I always had a penchant for falling in love. Every time I found myself without a mate, I fell into a state of low-sizzling panic.

Some people are surprised that the Republicans are waging a war on women, or that they voted against equal pay for women. I'm not surprised at all. In some ways, it may be a good thing. They're defending the patriarchy, which is a wounded beast! And wounded beasts are always dangerous.

I'm a very brave person. I can go to North Vietnam, I can challenge my government, but I can't challenge the man I'm with if means I'm going to end up alone.

I'll smoke pot every now and then. I cannot see a movie on pot. The number of movies I've seen thinking, This is probably the best I have ever seen, and then I'll see it again sober and think, What was I thinking?

If the career you have chosen has some unexpected inconvenience, console yourself by reflecting that no career is without them.

The most incredible beauty and the most satisfying way of life come from affirming your own uniqueness.

My greatest asset is that I am constantly changing.

You spend all your life trying to do something they put people in asylums for.

Well, what is a relationship? It's about two people having tremendous weaknesses and vulnerabilities, like we all do, and one person being able to strengthen the other in their areas of vulnerability, and vice versa. You need each other. You complete each other, passion and romance aside.

I am not a do-gooder. I am a revolutionary. A revolutionary woman.

Everyone should know that feeling of overcoming fear and mastering something. People who aren't taught that become soggy.

Getting fit is a political act - you are taking charge of your life.

When a significant other - a spouse, a parent or someone you're close to - is dying, it forces you to think about your life, about what you feel about death. What I realized from my dad's dying was that I wasn't scared of dying. But I was terrified of regrets. I was terrified of getting to the end of my life with a lot of Why didn't I's.

To be a revolutionary you have to be a human being. You have to care about people who have no power.

I thought I had learned how to have an intimate relationship. And I thought I'd learned how to be happy. Everybody has issues. For me, the challenge is intimacy, but I really didn't start to get that until I turned 60.

If you can intervene early in the lives of girls here and in other parts of the world, you can begin to change the prospects for the future.

Women are rising. And I think that's all the violence and war - it could be the last gasp of the patriarchy, actually.

I like to think both - it's not either/or. It's and.

I will go to my grave regretting the photograph of me in an anti-aircraft carrier [actually, it was in an anti-aircraft gun emplacement, not a carrier], which looks like I was trying to shoot at American planes. [Actually, that was her intention in posing for the photograph the way she did.] It hurt so many soldiers. It galvanized such hostility. It was the most horrible thing I could possibly have done. It was just thoughtless.

I like to be wild in passion and calculated in expression! I'm both. I like to be wild in passion more. But I think the balance is what's essential.

I feel like when I was an adolescent, and felt so unworthy of love and so empty, I moved outside of myself.

We cannot always control our thoughts, but we can control our words, and repetition impresses the subconscious, and we are then master of the situation.

What I learned is, we have to listen to each other, even when we don't agree, even when we think we hate each other. We have to listen to each others narratives. Not interrupt defensively, or with hostility, but really try to open our hearts and listen with empathy. I learned so much from that meeting. It was a very difficult thing to do and it was one of the best things that I ever did in my life. Look what scares you in the face, and try to understand it. Empathy, I have learned, is revolutionary.

I don't think there's anything more important than making peace before it's too late. And it almost always falls to the child to try to move toward the parent.

Physical fitness is a three-legged stool: strength, aerobic capacity, and flexibility.

Eat only when you are hungry-not because it is one o'clock or seven o'clock or whatever.

It is never too late to master your weaknesses.

I would like to say something, not just to Vietnam veterans in New England, but to men who were in Vietnam, who I hurt, or whose pain I caused to deepen because of the things that I said or did. I was trying to help end the killing and the war, but there were times when I was thoughtless and careless about it and I'm...very sorry that I hurt them. And I want to apologize to them and their families.

I have always been with men who were type A, alpha males. I must exist because I'm with him, I'd think. But what made them what they were also often meant they were lacking empathy genes. And now I know I don't need an alpha male; I need somebody who's interesting. I'm not pretending that I'm 100 percent healed, so I might not know if a man is right for me right away, but it wouldn't take me seven years to figure it out. Maybe a month or two.

Our youth deserve the opportunity to complete their high school and college education, free of early parenthood. Their future children deserve the opportunity to grow up in financially and emotionally stable homes. Our communities benefit from healthy, productive, well-prepared young people.

Seven Guidelines For a Healthy Diet 1. Substitute low-fat foods for high-fat foods 2. Cut down on meat-eat low on the food chain 3. Avoid salty and sugary foods 4. Cut down on sugar 5. Emphasize whole grains 6. Beware of alcohol 7. Emphasize the Healthy Five: Raw unsalted nuts and sesame seeds Sprouted seeds such as soybeans Fresh raw wheat bran and wheat germ Yogurt and kefir Fresh fruits and vegetables

I don't know if a country (America) where the people are so ignorant of reality and of history, if you can call that a free world.

The glow and energy of the healthy woman is the ultimate beauty, the only beauty that will last.

In my marriages, I'd lost parts of who I was because I was trying to mold myself into what I thought a man wanted me to be.

Address things now that could otherwise turn into regrets.

The institution of marriage is obsolete.

You can run the office without a boss, but you can't run an office without secretaries.

We're still living with the old paradigm of age as an arch. That's the old metaphor: You're born, you peak at midlife and decline into decrepitude.

We're not meant to be perfect. It took me a long time to learn that.

We are not meant to be perfect; we are meant to be whole

One part of wisdom is knowing what you don't need anymore and letting it go.

All my life I had believed that unless I was perfect I would not be loved.

I spent a good deal of time going back over my childhood, my midlife, to try to understand who I was. We're supposed to be complete and whole, and you can't be whole if you're trying to be perfect. Doing a life review helped me get over the disease to please.

I have a confidence about my life that comes from standing tall on my own two feet.

Sex and intimacy are not the same: You can have sex all your life and never be intimate with a person. There has to be empathy in the relationship. You have to enjoy seeing through their eyes. When you're with them, you're there and not thinking about what you're gonna do tomorrow.

Think about it: Reducing crime and poverty and ensuring that we have an educated, stable work force has a direct effect on you and me and the future of our country.