Daily Inspiration Quote by Gloria Steinem

Hope, in Gloria Steinem's hands, isn't a pastel slogan or a self-care mantra. It's a live wire. Calling hope "unruly" flips the usual script: hope doesn't politely soothe you into acceptance, it interferes. It makes a mess of the coping strategies that power systems rely on, like resignation, cynicism, and the quiet bargain of "that's just how it is."

Steinem's activist context matters because movements run on a volatile fuel mix: grief, anger, solidarity, and the stubborn belief that the future can be negotiated. "Unruly" captures the psychological fact that once you let yourself hope, you're no longer fully governable. You become harder to scare off with incremental crumbs, harder to shame into patience, harder to manage with "be realistic". Hope insists on action; it drags you out of private despair and into public risk. That's why it's inconvenient. It has timing problems. It shows up when the polling is bad, when backlash is loud, when the costs are personal.

The subtext is a critique of performative optimism. Steinem isn't endorsing cheerfulness; she's warning that hope, if taken seriously, will disrupt your life. It refuses to stay internal. It demands consistency between what you believe is possible and what you're willing to do about it.

The line also lands as feminist rhetoric: a pointed rebuttal to the expectation that women should be "pleasant" in their feelings and "reasonable" in their demands. Unruly hope is permission to want more than you're offered, and to keep wanting it even when you're told to calm down.