“People are allergic to change. You have to get out and sell the idea.”

Grace Hopper
Navy Admiral and computer scientist

“Life need not be easy, provided only it was not empty.”

Lise Meitner
Physicist

“I was taught that the way of progress is neither swift nor easy.”

Marie Curie
Physicist and chemist

“Why shouldn’t a woman run a reptile house? Women are at work in my country and the rest of the world, in all types of work and professions.”

Joan Procter
Zoologist

“There is no joy more intense than that of coming upon a fact that cannot be understood in terms of currently accepted ideas.”

Cecila Payne-Gaposchkin
Astronomer and astrophysicist

“It’s made to believe / women are the same as men; / are you not convinced / daughters can also be heroic?”

Wang Zhenyi
Astronomer, poet, and mathematician

“The human race is challenged more than ever before to demonstrate our mastery, not over nature but of ourselves.”

Rachel Carson
Marine biologist, conservationist, and author

“Above all, don’t fear difficult moments. The best comes from them.”

Rita Levi-Montalcini
Neurologist and italian senator

“If the present arrangements of society will not admit of woman’s free development, then society must be remodelled.”

Elizabeth Blackwell
Doctor

“The main stumbling block in the way of any progress is and always has been unimpeachable tradition.”

Chien-Shiung Wu
Experimental physicist

“Don’t let others discourage you or tell you that you can’t do it. In my day I was told women didn’t go into chemistry. I saw no reason why we couldn’t.”

Gertrude Elion
Pharmacologist and biochemist

“[The other women] didn’t ask questions or take the task any further. I asked questions; I wanted to know why. They got used to me asking questions and being the only woman there.”

Katherine Johnson
Physicist and mathematician

“Still more mysteries of the universe remain hidden. Their discovery awaits the adventurous scientists of the future. I like it this way.”

Vera Rubin
Astronomer

“Nothing was given to minorities or women. It took some fighting to get that equal opportunity, and we’re still fighting today.”

Annie Easley
Computer programmer, mathematician, and rocket scientist

“Only when our clever brain and our human heart work together can we reach our full potential.”

Jane Goodall
Primatologist, ethologist, and anthropologist

“Once you are at this faraway distance [in space], you realize the significance of what it is that unites us. Let us work together to overcome our differences.”

Valentina Tereshkova
Engineer and cosmonaut

“Believe in the power of truth… do not allow your mind to be imprisoned by majority thinking.”

Patricia Bath
Ophthalmologist and inventor

“If we assume we’ve arrived [at absolute truth], we stop searching. We stop developing.”

Jocelyn Bell Burnell
Astrophysicist

“The first thing about empowerment is to understand that you have the right to be involved. The second one is that you have something important to contribute. And the third piece is that you have to take the risk to contribute it.”

Mae Jemison
Astronaut, educator, and doctor