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Justice & Law Quote by Shakira

"I always believed that women have rights and that there are some women that are intelligent enough to claim those rights. There are some others that are stupid enough not to"

About this Quote

Shakira’s line lands like a compliment and a slap in the same breath, and that tension is the whole engine. She frames women’s rights as obvious, then pivots to a harsher claim: the real divider isn’t patriarchy alone, it’s whether women are “intelligent enough” to assert what’s already theirs. It’s a pop-star version of tough love, delivered with the brisk certainty of someone used to being underestimated and then winning anyway.

The subtext is both empowering and revealing. By treating rights as something you “claim,” she shifts agency onto the individual, implying liberation is partly a matter of nerve and self-respect. That’s a galvanizing message for fans who see in her a self-made global figure who crossed language, class, and industry barriers. But the bite comes from the word “stupid,” which smuggles in a moral hierarchy: women who don’t fight back are not just constrained; they’re culpable. It’s a rhetorically efficient move because it converts a political struggle into a personal litmus test.

Context matters: celebrity feminism often has to perform clarity in a noisy media ecosystem. A sharp binary travels farther than a nuanced diagnosis of social risk, economic dependence, violence, family pressure, or legal barriers that can make “claiming” rights dangerous or impossible. The quote works because it’s combustible - it dares listeners to identify with the “intelligent” camp. It also exposes the limits of empowerment talk when it mistakes survival strategies for consent.

Quote Details

TopicEquality
SourceHelp us find the source
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Citation Formats

APA Style (7th ed.)
Shakira. (2026, January 16). I always believed that women have rights and that there are some women that are intelligent enough to claim those rights. There are some others that are stupid enough not to. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/i-always-believed-that-women-have-rights-and-that-130451/

Chicago Style
Shakira. "I always believed that women have rights and that there are some women that are intelligent enough to claim those rights. There are some others that are stupid enough not to." FixQuotes. January 16, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/i-always-believed-that-women-have-rights-and-that-130451/.

MLA Style (9th ed.)
"I always believed that women have rights and that there are some women that are intelligent enough to claim those rights. There are some others that are stupid enough not to." FixQuotes, 16 Jan. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/i-always-believed-that-women-have-rights-and-that-130451/. Accessed 21 Feb. 2026.

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About the Author

Shakira

Shakira (born February 2, 1977) is a Musician from Colombia.

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