Daily Inspiration Quote by Katharine Hepburn

The dagger here is in the faux-innocence. Hepburn doesn’t storm the gates with a manifesto; she shrugs, almost bemused, and lets the absurdity of the premise indict itself. “I never realized until lately” frames sexism as a late-breaking rumor, not a natural law. That’s the trick: she treats “women were supposed to be the inferior sex” like a social memo she somehow missed, which exposes it as exactly that - an instruction, a script, a con.

The subtext is pure Hepburn: competence precedes permission. She came up in an industry that sold femininity as both product and punishment, yet she built a persona that prized blunt intelligence, athleticism, and a kind of patrician refusal to apologize. Her line implies she’s been living as if equality were already true, and only “lately” encountered the bureaucratic insistence that she should act smaller. The word “supposed” is doing heavy lifting; it points to expectation, not essence, and makes sexism sound like bad stage direction.

Context matters: Hepburn’s career spans decades when women’s independence was framed as eccentric at best, threatening at worst. Off-screen, she wore pants when it was still a provocation; on-screen, she often played women who didn’t plead for legitimacy. The intent isn’t to deny oppression - it’s to mock its authority. By refusing to internalize the hierarchy, she demonstrates a quiet, radical idea: a system’s power depends on your participation, and contempt can be a form of escape.