Jane Fonda quotes:

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.

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.

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.

My childhood was influenced by the roles my father played in his movies. Whether Abraham Lincoln or Tom Joad in the 'Grapes of Wrath,' his characters communicated certain values which I try to carry with me to this day.

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.

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.

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.

A mother who is obsessing about being thin and dieting and exercising is not going to be a very good mother.

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.

Telling lies and showing off to get attention are mistakes I made that I don't want my kids to make.

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.

I don't want to make a cheap analysis, but when you have, like I did, a father incapable of showing emotion, who spends his life telling you that no one will love you if you aren't perfect, it leaves scars.

Parents are supposed to give the child back to herself with love. If they've got duct tape over their eyes because of narcissism, it doesn't happen.

The most important thing to do as you age is to stay physically active. Lots of people just throw in the towel if they can't do what they used to do, and that's terrible.

Ted needs someone to be there 100% of the time. He thinks that's love. It's not love - it's babysitting.

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.

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.

If adolescent pregnancy prevention is to become a priority, then our strategy, as advocates, must contain two key elements: civic engagement and education.

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.

Through therapy and a lot of thinking and writing my memoirs, I've been able to use my life as a lesson.

I love mistakes because it's the only way you learn.

I took every chance I could to meet with U.S. soldiers. I talked with them and read the books they gave me about the war. I decided I needed to return to my country and join with them - active duty soldiers and Vietnam Veterans in particular - to try and end the war.

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

I'm now the elder in the position of doling out wisdom and trying to mend fences.

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

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.

I was always a courageous woman, capable of confronting governments but not men.

I feel like my honesty gives people the freedom to talk about things they wouldn't otherwise.

Emotionality is really easy for me. My father always said that Fondas can cry at a good steak.

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

A good many dramatic situations begin with screaming.

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.

It's hard for women at my age in Hollywood, but I'm not discouraged.

People think actresses find public speaking easy, and it's not easy at all; we're used to hiding behind masks.

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 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.

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.

I don't want my wrinkles taken away - I don't want to look like everyone else.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

I am still baffled by those who feel that criticizing America is unpatriotic, a view increasingly being adopted in the United States since 9/11 as an excuse to render suspect what has always been an American right. An active, brave, outspoken (and heard) citizenry is essential to a healthy democracy.

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.

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

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

Just saw American Sniper. Powerful. Another view of Coming Home. Bradley Cooper sensational. Bravo Clint Eastwood.

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

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

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.

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?

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

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

I grew up with a deep belief that wherever our troops fought, they were on the side of the angels.

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

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

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

In the hyper-sensitized reality of the region in which any criticism of Israel is swiftly and often unfairly branded as anti-Semitic, it can become counterproductive to inflame rather than explain and this means to hear the narratives of both sides, to articulate the suffering on both sides, not just the Palestinians.

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

The skin is our body's envelope, the wrapping that delivers us to the world. If we understand how the skin functions in mid-life and adjust goals and life-styles appropriately, we'll be surprised how much better we can look.

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

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 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.

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.

That's what we're all doing: paving the way, finding the roles that have the complication instead of the one that's always got it together or the dedicated housewife or the wild one who smokes cigarettes and sleeps with anybody.

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

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.

The reality is sobering: in the United States one in three girls will become pregnant before age 20, totaling more than 750,000 girls per year.

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

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.

You cannot expect your children to be happy eating esoteric beige-colored foods when their friends get soda pop, Snickers, and Twinkies.

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

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

Real love and intimacy can be much more possible when you're older.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

I find that arduous physical labor can jump-start my thought process.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

The only thing I have never known is true intimacy with a man. I absolutely wanted to discover that before dying.

I've been accused of being too flexible, too willing to mold myself to men, and that's something I'm constantly working on.

My love life is wonderful.

I love films that make you feel good when you come out and, in my opinion, there's not enough of them these days.

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

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

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

Female listeners are leaving traditional talk radio because of the rough-edged, shouting nature of it.

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

Relationships are the oxygen of the psyche.

You're more powerful when talking from your soul.

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 finally got it: empower girls and everything changes.

We grow up being told, "Be a good girl." When you're told to be good, you have to get rid of whatever is bad.

Go for the burn! Sweat!

We need women friends, women who challenge us.

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

It's better to be interested than interesting.

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

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

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.

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.

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