Powerful Quotes from The Handmaid’s Tale That Resonate Today

Nolite te bastardes carborundorum.

Better never means better for everyone.

Freedom, like everything else, is relative.

Ignoring isn’t the same as ignorance, you have to work at it.

A rat in a maze is free to go anywhere, as long as it stays inside the maze.

Nothing changes instantaneously: in a gradually heating bathtub, death is a slow procedure.

We were the people who were not in the papers.

I will not be taken alive.

The past is a great darkness and the future is unknown.

You can’t make me do anything I don’t want to do.

When we think of the past it’s the beautiful things we pick out.

The heart beats in a void.

We were the ones who belonged to the shadows.

Who knows what they know?

There’s no such thing as a free choice.

The choices we make are shaped by the choices of others.

I would rather have a little of nothing than a lot of something that doesn’t belong to me.

Your life is a treasure, and there are many ways to steal it.

A woman’s place is wherever she chooses.

The eyes of others are a prison.

Memory is a way of holding onto the things you love.

You can’t start over—only begin again.

We were the ones who dared to dream.

True freedom is found in the mind.

Sometimes, silence is the only answer.

Hope is a dangerous thing to hold on to.

What you don’t know can hurt you.

We are all born of stories.

To be seen and not heard is a kind of freedom.

A world without choice is a world without life.

Fear is what makes us human.

In the end, we all create our own narratives.

Loss is a strange kind of freedom.

Being invisible is a form of power.

Words can be your strongest shield.

Connection is a thread that binds us.

They thought they could silence us, but we’ve always had our voices.

The whisper of rebellion is carried on the wind.

We are the stories we tell.

Strength lies in those who refuse to be broken.

In the rubble of despair, hope still flickers.

We exist in defiance of the boundaries set for us.

In every moment of darkness, there is a flicker of light.

The weight of silence is sometimes heavier than words.

Our struggles craft the narrative of our lives.