"Ain't I a woman?"

In their honor, I've listed a few of my favorite or most formative women. I've not included close, personal women because I would undoubtedly forget many who would then be heartbroken. But please feel free to add to my list with the many I've forgotten or with some of your own I may not know of. And if you don't know who some of these women are or what they have done, look it up!

Amelia Earhart--“Never interrupt someone doing what you said couldn't be done.”
Angeles Mastretta (para todas las Mujeres con Ojos Grandes)
Ann M. Martin (definitely a formative and not a favorite)
Anne Frank--“How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world.”
Annie Dillard--“Just once I wanted a task that required all the joy I had. Day after day I had noticed that if I waited long enough, my strong unexpressed joy would dwindle and dissipate inside me, like a fire subsiding . . . . Just this once I wanted to let it rip.”
Barbara Kingsolver
Barbara McClintock
Betsy Ross
Charlotte Bronte
Clara Barton--“I may sometimes be willing to teach for nothing, but if paid at all, I shall never do a man's work for less than a man's pay.”
Coretta Scott King
Corrie ten Boom--“It is not my ability, but my response to God’s ability, that counts.”
Dian Fossey
Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin (remember her, fellow women in science?!)
Dorothy Dix
Elizabeth Blackwell
Eva Perón
Florence Nightingale
Frida Kahlo
George Eliot--“I'm not denyin' that women are foolish; God Almighty made 'em to match men.”
Gina Kolata
Harriet Beecher Stowe
Harriet Tubman
Hellen Keller--“It is wonderful how much time good people spend fighting the devil. If they would only expend the same amount of energy loving their fellow men, the devil would die in his own tracks of ennui.”
Hua Mu-Lan
Isabel Allende--“How can one not speak about war, poverty, and inequality when people who suffer from these afflictions don't have a voice to speak?”
Jane Austen
Julie Andrews--“In every job that must be done, there is an element of fun. You find the fun and... SNAP! The job's a game!”
Kate Chopin
Laura Ingalls Wilder
Louisa May Alcott--“Far away there in the sunshine are my highest aspirations. I may not reach them, but I can look up and see their beauty, believe in them, and try to follow where they lead.”
Lurlene McDaniels (shout out for the death books!)
Margaret Sanger
Maria Montessori
Marie Curie--“After all, science is essentially international, and it is only through lack of the historical sense that national qualities have been attributed to it.”
Mary Putnam Jacobi
Maya Angelou--“If you don't like something, change it. If you can't change it, change your attitude.”
Mother Teresa--“I want you to be concerned about your next door neighbor. Do you know your next door neighbor?”
Natalie Angier
Rachel Carson--“If a child is to keep alive his inborn sense of wonder, he needs the companionship of at least one adult who can share it, rediscovering with him the joy, excitement and mystery of the world we live in.”
Rosa Parks
Rosalind Franklin
Sojourner Truth--"Ain't I a woman?"
Susan B. Anthony
Sylvia Plath