1. Madonna 

"I'm tough. I'm ambitious, and I know exactly what I want. If that makes me a bitch, okay."

2. Jane Austen 

"I hate to hear you talk about all women as if they were fine ladies instead of rational creatures. None of us want to be in calm waters all our lives."

3. Michelle Obama 

"Women, we endure those cuts in so many ways that we don't even notice we're cut. We are living with small tiny cuts, and we are bleeding every single day. And we're still getting up."

4. Maya Angelou

"I love to see a young girl go out and grab the world by the lapels. Life's a bitch. You've got to go out and kick ass."

5. Nancy Pelosi

"Women are leaders everywhere you look - from the CEO who runs a Fortune 500 company to the housewife who raises her children and heads her household. Our country was built by strong women, and we will continue to break down walls and defy stereotypes."

6. Meryl Streep 

"I think the best role models for women are people who are fruitfully and confidently themselves, who bring light into the world."

7. Amy Schumer 

"I am a woman with thoughts and questions and shit to say. I say if I'm beautiful. I say if I'm strong. You will not determine my story - I will."

8. Hillary Clinton 

"Always aim high, work hard, and care deeply about what you believe in. And when you stumble, keep faith. And, when you're knocked down, get right back up and never listen to anyone who says you can't or shouldn't go on."

9. Ursula K. Le Guin

"Before the moon I am, what a woman is, a woman of power, a woman's power, deeper than the roots of trees, deeper than the roots of islands, older than the Making, older than the moon."

10. Rupi Kaur 

"i want to apologize to all the women

i have called pretty

before i've called them intelligent or brave

i am sorry i made it sound as though

something as simple as what you're born with

is the most you have to be proud of when your

spirit has crushed mountains

from now on i will say things like

you are resilient or you are extraordinary

not because i don't think you're pretty

but because you are so much more than that"

11. Rosalyn Yalow

"We cannot expect in the immediate future that all women who seek it will achieve full equality of opportunity. But if women are to start moving towards that goal, we must believe in ourselves or no one else will believe in us; we must match our aspirations with the competence, courage, and determination to succeed."

12. Angelina Jolie 

"Women are still treated as secondary issues. It is still far too easy and accepted for leaders to ignore uncomfortable truths...Women, we know, are the first to be affected by war, and the last to be taken into account when it ends."

13. Gloria Steinem

"The best way for us to cultivate fearlessness in our daughters and other young women is by example. If they see their mothers and other women in their lives going forward despite fear, they'll know it's possible."

14. Antonella Gambotto-Burke 

"It is only through my daughter that I have come to realize that a life without femininity - devoid of mystery, emotion, gentleness, and the unerring power of a woman's love - is no life at all."

15. Sojourner Truth

"If the first woman God ever made was strong enough to turn the world upside down all alone, these women together ought to be able to turn it back, and get it right side up again! And now that they're asking to do it, the men better let them."