Jane Fonda

Jane Fonda in 2015

Jane Seymour Fonda (born December 21, 1937) is an Academy Award-winning American actress, model, writer, producer and political activist.

Quotes

• How would you like to have a father who keeps getting younger looking every year? Do you realize what that can do to a woman?
  • Jane Would Have Been a Star Even as a Smith. Associated Press/Daytona Beach Morning Journal, 30 June 1963 [1]

• Being Henry Fonda's daughter got me started. But it didn't keep me working.
  • Jane Would Have Been a Star Even as a Smith. Associated Press/Daytona Beach Morning Journal, 30 June 1963 [2]

• The institution of marriage is obsolete
  • Jane Would Have Been a Star Even as a Smith. Associated Press/Daytona Beach Morning Journal, 30 June 1963 [3]

• I vowed I wouldn't get married until someone gave me one good reason to. No one ever did - but I got married anyway
  • Said to Redbook Magazine, quoted by Harold V. Cohen, At Random, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 22 July 1969 [4]

• In this country the only way a minority can get anything done is to make a little noise.
  • Quotes from Women in the News, Associated Press/Gadsden Times, 15 March 1970.[5]

• It's an unfair position, so you can do one of two things: just shut up, which is something I don't find easy, or just learn an awful lot very fast, which is what I tried to do.
  • Leo Lerman, Jane Fonda Talks About. Juxtaposition, 1971, said in reference to media reactions to her learning about Indian affairs.

• I believe that we cannot survive as a democratic country when we are supporting someone like Thieu in Saigon, who has put 300,000 political prisoners in jail because they've spoken in favor of peace. I just don't believe that when a Republican Party bugs the Democratic Party headquarters, that that smacks of democracy. These kind of things I speak out against. That doesn't mean I'm a Communist.
  • Interview by Phil Donahue (1972)

• Winning means some kind of approval of the Establishment which means people will more readily accept me, may be less frightened of me and other people who speak out
  • On winning the Academy Award for Best Actress. Quotes of the Week. The Associated Press/Reading Eagle, 16 April 1972 [6]

• To be a revolutionary you have to be a human being. You have to care about people who have no power.
  • Newsweek, 1977, in reference to Jean-Luc Godard. The quote continues: "Godard had contempt for people, contempt for extras. I'd rather work with someone ideologically very different from me if they have concern and humanity towards their crew".

• I am saddened that I have been linked with her politically... I have disagreed with her on every issue, from the bottom of my toes
  • On Vanessa Redgrave, reported by Spartanburg Herald-Journal, 28 December 1979. [7]

• Women are not forgiven for aging. Robert Redford's lines of distinction are my old-age wrinkles.
  • Michael Perry. Jane's wrinkled but Fonda herself now. Sydney Morning Herald, 22 December 1985[8]

• It's not about how you look, it's about how you feel. I can do more with ease and grace now at 52 than I could when I was 20. I can ride my bike 60 miles, I can handle stress, I have good muscle tone. That's what it's about. Not about being thin but about being healthy
  • Telephone interview quoted by Carol Krucoff. Why Jane's Fonda Exercise;Stress-Busting Workouts and Other News About Staying in Shape. Washington Post, 13 March 1990

• I don't think there's ever been such a clear choice between radicalism and moderation. I mean, we are dealing with a radical ideologue here.
  • On the 2004 Presidential election. Rebecca Traister. Enough with the vaginas! Salon, 15 September 2004 [9]

• It's a lie. I agree with the military experts who say it's a quagmire.
  • On the Iraq War. Rebecca Traister. Enough with the vaginas! Salon, 15 September 2004 [10]

• The trick is to be Zen about it. Winning is sometimes not the prize
  • On Twitter before the 2009 Tony Awards, as quoted by Canada East/Associated Press. Notable quotes from 2009 Tony Awards. 8 June 2009.[11]

• In the hyper-sensitized reality of the region in which any criticism of Israel is swiftly and often unfairly branded as anti-Semitic, it can become counterproductive to inflame rather than explain and this means to hear the narratives of both sides, to articulate the suffering on both sides, not just the Palestinians.
  • Jane Fonda expresses regret over film fest protest, by Cassandra Szklarski, September 14, 2009.

• This has gone on far too long, this spreading of lies about me! None of it is true. NONE OF IT! I love my country. I have never done anything to hurt my country or the men and women who have fought and continue to fight for us. I do not understand what the far right stands to gain by continuing with these myths.
  • Blog posting (16 July 2011) [12]

Disputed

• I believe that we have to strive for a transition to a socialist society … all the way to communism. I mean I think we should, uh, I think we should all study what the word means and I believe that if everyone knew what the word meant we would all be on our knees praying that we would, as soon as possible, be able to live under, uh, within a communist structure.
  • Reported by Jesse Helms on WRAL-TV as remarks made at Duke University, quoted in The News and Courier (29 December 1970) "Freedom Hoax" [13]
• Alternate form: I would think that if you understood what communism was, you would hope and pray on your knees that we would someday be communists. I am a socialist. I think that we should strive toward a socialist society - all the way to communism.
  • Reported by Paul Scott in the Lewiston Daily Sun (27 September 1972) again as remarks at Duke University;[14] reported elsewhere as a remark made at Michigan State University (22 November 1970) and cited to the Detroit Free Press but without a date, page or headline.
    Rick Perlstein, in a 2005 London Review of Books article and in his 2008 book Nixonland: The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America (Simon and Schuster, p517[15]), accused Helms of inventing the quote: "They tapped their network of friendly media propagandists, like the future Senator Jesse Helms, then a TV editorialist, who supplied an invented quotation that still circulates as part of the Fonda cult’s liturgy."[16] The COINTELPRO Papers (2002) documents a separate attempt to plant false quotes from Fonda in the press.

About Fonda

• Jane Fonda, who had eagerly agreed to participate in the rally, was on hand to make the appeal for funds.
  • Angela Davis: An Autobiography (2022)

• How’s this for a story? North Vietnam, 1972: Jane Fonda is in the midst of her visit when an N.V.A. officer gets an idea. He collects a group of American POWs from their septic dungeons, cleans them up, and has them mustered on parade to show his guest how well his embattled nation treats its prisoners.… Fonda moves down the line, greeting each man with encouragements like “Aren’t you ashamed you killed babies?” as she shakes his hand.… The POWs are beaten. Four die; one, Col. Larry Carrigan, survives—just barely, but it is he who tells about the incident.
  …
  It never happened. It’s folklore, but folklore of a curiously evolved sort. There was a real Colonel Carrigan, and he was a POW in Vietnam. But he never met Jane Fonda, and he has no idea how the maddening tale attached itself to him.
  • Richard F. Snow in American Heritage (October 2001) "Unforgiven"

• You know, Jane Fonda never came back at all after the war. I wonder why. She’d made a tape I played that was very good. I heard that some years ago she made an apology in the United States for coming to Hanoi during the war. Is that true?
  • Hanoi Hannah, Los Angeles Times (April 1998) "‘Hanoi Hannah’ Fondly Remembers Her Role"

• It only took 40 years. But finally, actress-turned-workout-specialist Jane Fonda has apologized for sitting on a Viet Cong anti-aircraft gun during her 1972 visit to North Vietnam. Fonda, who used her fame to push her radical leftism during her heyday, traveled to Hanoi in 1972 in solidarity with the Viet Cong. While there, she proceeded to blame the US for supposedly bombing a dike system, and did a series of radio broadcasts stating that US leaders were “war criminals.” Those broadcasts were replayed for American POWs being tortured by the Viet Cong. Later, when POWs spoke about their experiences of torture, Fonda would call them “hypocrites and liars,” stating, “These were not men who had been tortured. These were not men who had been starved. These were not men who had been brainwashed.” She explained that these POWs were “careerists and professional killers.” Now, four decades removed, sitting in the lap of luxury, Fonda has decided that the pictures on the anti-aircraft gun were a mistake. Not the actual visit – she stands by that. “I did not, have not, and will not say that going to North Vietnam was a mistake,” she said. “I have apologized only for some of the things that I did there, but I am proud that I went.”
  • Ben Shapiro, Jane Fonda finally apologises, Frontpage Mag

• On May 7, a few weeks after the accident at Three-Mile Island, I was in Washington. I was there to refute some of that propaganda that Ralph Nader, Jane Fonda and their kind are spewing to the news media in their attempt to frighten people away from nuclear power. I am 71 years old, and I was working 20 hours a day. The strain was too much. The next day, I suffered a heart attack. You might say that I was the only one whose health was affected by that reactor near Harrisburg. No, that would be wrong. It was not the reactor. It was Jane Fonda. Reactors are not dangerous.
  • Edward Teller, 2 page advertisement sponsored by Dresser Industries in the Wall Street Journal (31 July 1979)