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Daily Inspiration Quote by Coco Chanel

"Women must tell men always that they are the strong ones. They are the big, the strong, the wonderful. In truth, women are the strong ones. It is just my opinion, I am not a professor"

About this Quote

Chanel slips a stiletto under the tablecloth and smiles while she does it. On the surface, the line flatters men: tell them theyre strong, wonderful, in charge. But the engine of the quote is its double bookkeeping. The flattery is framed as a tactic, not a tribute. If women have to keep repeating the myth of male strength, Chanel implies, thats already evidence of how fragile it is.

The subtext is classic Chanel: power is not always the loud, official kind. It lives in perception management, in the social labor of soothing egos and steering rooms without claiming the podium. Her pivot - "In truth, women are the strong ones" - lands as a quiet reversal, the kind that feels less like a manifesto than a private confession between co-conspirators. Then she undercuts herself with "It is just my opinion, I am not a professor", a disarming little dodge that reads like both modesty and camouflage. She refuses the academic tone because she is selling lived knowledge: the rhetoric of the salon, the atelier, the marriage market.

Context matters because Chanel built an empire by remaking femininity as mobility and control: simpler silhouettes, practical elegance, a rejection of ornamental helplessness. Yet her worldview also reflects the constraints of her era, when womens influence was often indirect by necessity. The quote works because it captures that uneasy truth: in a culture that rewards male dominance, women learn to speak deference fluently - and sometimes use it as leverage.

Quote Details

TopicEquality
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Citation Formats

APA Style (7th ed.)
Chanel, Coco. (n.d.). Women must tell men always that they are the strong ones. They are the big, the strong, the wonderful. In truth, women are the strong ones. It is just my opinion, I am not a professor. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/women-must-tell-men-always-that-they-are-the-33155/

Chicago Style
Chanel, Coco. "Women must tell men always that they are the strong ones. They are the big, the strong, the wonderful. In truth, women are the strong ones. It is just my opinion, I am not a professor." FixQuotes. Accessed February 2, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/women-must-tell-men-always-that-they-are-the-33155/.

MLA Style (9th ed.)
"Women must tell men always that they are the strong ones. They are the big, the strong, the wonderful. In truth, women are the strong ones. It is just my opinion, I am not a professor." FixQuotes, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/women-must-tell-men-always-that-they-are-the-33155/. Accessed 2 Feb. 2026.

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About the Author

Coco Chanel

Coco Chanel (August 19, 1883 - January 10, 1971) was a Designer from France.

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