Jane Fonda Quotes

I believe people have different ways of approaching the Word. For me, it's metaphor, written by people a long time after Christ died and interpreted by specific groups. I read the gospels that aren't included in the Bible. These make me feel good about calling myself a Christian.

I always carry yeast flakes and bran with me when I travel.

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

I am able to talk about my life in a way that helps other women - and men, but mostly women - understand their own life. I feel real proud of that. And then the fact that my children are okay. You know, you're only as happy as your least happy child. So if your kids aren't okay, you're not good.

I would have given up acting in a minute. I didn't like how it set me apart from other people.

I lived in France during the '60s. I was there from the early '60s until 1970, so my view of the '60s is more global. It was a time of tremendous transition, not only for America but for the whole world.

Every woman should eat for the long run so she can manage the short stops of crisis.

Go for the burn! Sweat!

Get over the feeling that the two words don't go together - women and power. The fact is, if we don't put the two together and don't understand how power changes complexion in the hands of women, then we're not going to make it. We have to own our personal power.

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

In psychologist Marion Woodman's Leaving My Father's House I read: "When humans suffer they are vulnerable. Within this vulnerability lives the humility that allows flesh to soften into the sounds of the soul." Maybe this was what was happening to me. I felt lighter, as if a space had been cleared around me allowing coincidences (God's way of remaining anonymous) to manifest. Maybe these coincidences had been happening all along and I just hadn't been open to them. Now it was as though I were being led to them.

I was so devastated by my second divorce that I had a nervous breakdown.

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

What many people failed to do then (and continue to fail to do today) is admit what happened, understand the context, and make sure those circumstances never happen again. The winter soldiers showed us that redemption is possible when truth is spoken. Nothing can change until we acknowledge what is - as I have learned over time.

I'd like to think that I have integrity.

We can no longer waste time and money. Every day, more than 2,000 girls in America, age 15-19, give birth - in the wealthiest, most educated nation in the world! Neither you nor I should accept this statistic.

Feminism is not just about women; it's about letting all people lead fuller lives.

Men fear that becoming 'we' will erase his 'I.' For women, our 'we' is our saving grace Women's relationships are like a renewable source of power.

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.

I needed to pay attention, to be ready to step through and descend into it, whatever it was. It felt archetypal. Something in me was being slain in the fires of pain so that some new thing could be born. I knew it and went with it, and in the alchemy of my pain, like flowers whose seeds open only in the presence of fire, tendrils of something new began to sprout. Pain for me was a Trojan horse, penetrating the protective walls I'd erected around my heart, bearing within it hints of a future I might never have awakened to had I tried to numb myself with busyness.

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.

This toxic striving for perfection is a female thing. How many men obsess about being perfect? For men, generally, good enough is good enough.

Beware of men who use words that relate pejoratively to females when describing the 'other side.

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

You are being used as cannon fodder for U.S. imperialism.

The absolute minimum for effective exercise is three times a week on alternate days for at least half an hour.

Women are not forgiven for ageing

Shortly after I turned 50, both Ted Turner and the AARP came into my life. The only difference? With AARP, there were benefits.

Studios weren't banging on my door to offer me parts ... And I thought, well how am I ever going to make movies that speak to my heart and to my values?

I think most of us have many personas inside us at the outset, but over time we lean to the one that is dominant and the others atrophy for lack of use. The difference with actors is that we are paid to become all the people inside us and to bring into us all the people we may have met along the way. Thus we remain instinctively aware of, unsettled by, curious about, empathetic toward, and eager to display all those potential beings we carry. Of all these, the empathy part is the most important and is, I believe, why actors - the good ones - tend to be open, progressive creatures: We are asked to get inside the skin of "other," to feel with "other," to understand "other." Being able to see from this "other" point of view gives actors compassion.

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.

Drink water between meals instead of with them so that the digestive juices will not be diluted.

Our young people are assets to be cultivated and nurtured; let's begin treating them that way.

The '60s may be idealized in the movie from a cultural point of view, but the decade was all about discord and a big generational split that was very painful.

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.

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

Have you noticed how we are presented with the same lessons, over and over and over, before a tipping point is reached? The lessons we need to learn circle round us, closing in, until finally we are ready to take them in. Take them in. Those are the words that matter, because until I had embodied the lessons I was supposed to learn, absorbed them into the warp and woof of my being, they didn't "take"; they remained a head trip and didn't lead to changes in my behavior.

Your goal should be to take your body and make it as healthy, strong, flexible and well-proportioned as you can.

I spent most of my time floating on an inflatable raft in the pristine Mediterranean waters, my big belly curving toward the sun, reading (incongruously) The Autobiography of Malcolm X. It rocked me to my core. Malcolm's story opened a window onto a reality I had ignored. But the greatest revelation the book brought me was the possibility of profound human transformation. I was spellbound by his journey from the doped-up, numbers-running, woman-beating, street-hustling, pimping Malcolm Little to a proud, clean, literate, Muslim Malcolm X who taught that all white people were the Devil incarnate - to his final, spiritual transformation in Mecca. There he met white people from all over the world who received him as a brother, and he realized that "white," as he had been using the word, didn't mean skin color as much as it meant attitudes and actions some whites held toward non-whites - but that not all whites were racist. At the time of his murder, he was anything but the hatemonger portrayed in the American press. Somehow, through the horrors that had been his life, he had become a spiritual leader. How had this been possible?

I am blessed beyond reason with women friends.

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

So much conspires to silence us - because our truths are inherently subversive.

We cannot elect men to office who are afraid of premature evacuation.

While not impossible, it is especially challenging for teenage parents to develop bonds with their children. A high percent of them were themselves children of teenage parents and have never experienced appropriate parenting.

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

The challenge is not to be perfect ... it's to be whole

We've got to establish a Socialist economic structure that will limit private profit-oriented businesses. Whether the transition is peaceful depends on the way our present governmental leaders react. We must commit our lives to this transition ... We should be very proud of our new breed of soldier. It's not organized but it's mutiny, and they have every right.

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

When you can't remember why you're hurt, that's when you're healed.

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

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

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

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

Rituals are important. I get up. I take the dogs on a walk around to the front and then I pick up the papers. Then I walk around to the front door, then me and the two dogs come in the house and I give them treats. I make coffee. It's the regularity of these kinds of rituals that I find deeply satisfying.

Almost 100 years after women secured the right to vote in 1920 through the 19th Amendment, we still do not have equal rights under the Constitution. My question for the GOP candidates: Do you support the Equal Rights Amendment?

Consistency can be a trap, especially if it leads to being consistently wrong rather than to stopping, admitting your mistake, and changing course.

I was a chameleon, the woman men wanted me to be.

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.

When you're an older woman [in a movie], you are the brunt of the joke.

...and my professional idol Vanessa Redgrave. There is a quality about Vanessa that makes me feel as if she resides in a nether-world of mystery that eludes the rest of us mortals. Her voice seems to come from some deep place that knows all suffering and all secrets. Watching her work is like seeing through layers of glass, each layer painted in mythic watercolor images, layer after layer, until it becomes dark - but even then you know you haven't come to the bottom of it.

Food is more than a matter of taste-it is the fuel for our bodies.

In this age of remote-controlled pushbutton war, we must all try very, very hard to remain human beings.

If you're ever in a situation where you're not getting served or you can't get what you need, just cry.

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

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.

Think of anger as a muscle. The way you express anger isn't the way that I do, or you. If you have a good director, you will find that he's getting you to use an entirely different muscle that you never even knew you had - it's real hard and sore, then after a while it becomes normal. And you discover all these new muscles when you enter a new character - that's what a director does for you.

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.

My love life is wonderful.

I hate to create cynicism about politicians. We just need to invade. Regular people need to run for office and keep their balls and ovaries intact.

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've worked really, really hard on myself to not be judgmental.

Ask questions. Stay curious. It's much more important to stay interested than to be interesting.

Women are not forgiven for aging. Robert Redford's lines of distinction are my old-age wrinkles.

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

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.

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.

I've done four videos for older people under my new brand, Prime Time, and the missing link was yoga. I'm aiming it for older people - people who have never worked out or who are recovering from a surgery and have to start slow. It's easy, you can't get hurt, it's very doable, and I've done it in ten-minute segments.

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

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

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.

When you're told to be good, you have to get rid of whatever is bad. I sure identify with that.

My mother killed herself when I was 12. I won't complete that relationship. But I can try to understand her.

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 and think, 'What was I thinking?'

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

Children born to teens have less supportive and stimulating environments, poorer health, lower cognitive development, and worse educational outcomes. Children of teen mothers are at increased risk of being in foster care and becoming teen parents themselves, thereby repeating the cycle.

Movies are collective, cooperative endeavours, which I like a lot. But writing is all up to you, it's what's so scary; it's just you and that page. But I really like it a lot.

Mostly actors are progressive because we are accustomed to all the nuances of human life, whereas dictators just try to flatten it all out. So we usually try to stand up to dictators like, well, we won't mention names.

When I left the West Coast I was a liberal. When I landed in New York I was a revolutionary.

Lee Strasberg told me I had talent. Real talent. It was the first time that anyone, except my father
who had to say so
told me I was good. At anything. It was a turning point in my life. I went to bed thinking about acting. I woke up thinking about acting. It was like the roof had come off my life!

I see many more men who are feminist, or at least who have learned about life in the context of feminism.

I remember saying goodbye to my father the night he left to join the Navy. He didn't have to. He was older than other servicemen and had a family to support but he wanted to be a part of the fight against fascism, not just make movies about it. I admired this about him.

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 have people in my life who will say, 'Honey, you're trying too hard.' I like being saucy, but I'm 73 and a half. I'm still trying to find my way between matronly and coltishness.

Seek women mentors. If you're a businesswoman, look at the TEDx conferences. There's a lot of businesswomen that speak on there. I find them extremely inspiring.

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

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

It's about time we make the well-being of our young people more important than ideology and politics. As a country, we benefit from investing in their future by investing in teen pregnancy prevention.

"Strong" to people means "real." It means you believe that's a person who exists, as opposed to some two-dimensional depiction of women.