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Daily Inspiration Quote by Gloria Steinem

"God may be in the details, but the goddess is in the questions. Once we begin to ask them, there's no turning back"

About this Quote

Steinem flips an old piety on its head and, in the process, tells you exactly what kind of feminist she is: not a doctrinaire handing down answers, but a troublemaker consecrating curiosity. “God may be in the details” nods to the masculine-coded tradition of expertise, craftsmanship, and authority - the comforting idea that if we just perfect the work, the meaning will reveal itself. Then she pivots: “but the goddess is in the questions.” The divine shifts from precision to interrogation, from making things fit to asking why they were built that way in the first place.

The gendered switch isn’t cute wordplay; it’s a cultural critique. Calling the questioning force a “goddess” smuggles women’s authority back into a world that has historically treated female doubt as hysteria or disrespect. It reframes skepticism as sacred, not corrosive. In Steinem’s universe, questions are not a prelude to certainty; they’re an ethical stance. They keep power from closing the case.

“Once we begin to ask them, there’s no turning back” lands with the inevitability of consciousness-raising - the 1970s feminist practice of naming what had been privatized as “just my problem.” The point isn’t that questions are pleasant. It’s that they’re irreversible. You can’t unsee the wage gap after you’ve asked who set the pay scales. You can’t re-enter a “normal” relationship once you’ve asked who benefits from your silence. Steinem is warning and inviting at once: inquiry is liberation, and liberation has a cost.

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APA Style (7th ed.)
Steinem, Gloria. (2026, January 15). God may be in the details, but the goddess is in the questions. Once we begin to ask them, there's no turning back. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/god-may-be-in-the-details-but-the-goddess-is-in-142537/

Chicago Style
Steinem, Gloria. "God may be in the details, but the goddess is in the questions. Once we begin to ask them, there's no turning back." FixQuotes. January 15, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/god-may-be-in-the-details-but-the-goddess-is-in-142537/.

MLA Style (9th ed.)
"God may be in the details, but the goddess is in the questions. Once we begin to ask them, there's no turning back." FixQuotes, 15 Jan. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/god-may-be-in-the-details-but-the-goddess-is-in-142537/. Accessed 12 Feb. 2026.

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Gloria Steinem

Gloria Steinem (born March 25, 1934) is a Activist from USA.

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