20 @JaneFonda TEDxWomen Quotes

Jane Fonda is an American actress, writer, political activist, former fashion model, feminist, and fitness guru.

She has won two Academy Awards and has been an activist for many political causes, including protesting against the Vietnam War, the  Iraq War and violence against women. 

These 20 quotes were extracted from her December 2011 talk at TEDxWomen.

"We're still living with the old paradigm of age as an arch. That's the metaphor, the old metaphor. You're born, you peak at midlife and decline into decrepitude." 

"A more appropriate metaphor for aging is a staircase -- the upward ascension of the human spirit, bringing us into wisdom, wholeness and authenticity."

"Most people over 50 feel better, are less stressed, are less hostile, less anxious."

"I come from a long line of depressives."

"I thought, oh my gosh. I'm going to become a crotchety old lady!"

"Now that I am actually smack-dab in the middle of my own third act, I realize I've never been happier."

"I have such a powerful feeling of well-being."

"When you're inside oldness, as opposed to looking at it from the outside, fear subsides. You're still yourself -- maybe even more so."

"The entire world operates on a universal law: entropy, the second law of thermodynamics. Entropy means that everything in the world, everything, is in a state of decline and decay, the arch. There's only one exception to this universal law, and that is the human spirit, which can continue to evolve upwards -- the staircase -- bringing us into wholeness, authenticity and wisdom."

"Upward ascension can happen even in the face of extreme physical challenges."

"We're all born with spirit, all of us, but sometimes it gets tamped down beneath the challenges of life, violence, abuse, neglect."

"Perhaps the task of the third act is to finish up the task of finishing ourselves."

"I realized that, in order to know where I was going, I had to know where I'd been."

“‘A life review’…can give new significance and clarity and meaning to a person's life."

"You may discover, as I did, that a lot of things that you used to think were your fault, a lot of things you used to think about yourself, really had nothing to do with you. It wasn't your fault; you're just fine. And you're able to go back and forgive them and forgive yourself. You're able to free yourself from your past. You can work to change your relationship to your past."

"If we can go back and alter our relationship, re-vision our relationship to past people and events, neural pathways can change. And if we can maintain the more positive feelings about the past, that becomes the new norm."

"It's not having experiences that make us wise, it's reflecting on the experiences that we've had that makes us wise -- and that helps us become whole, brings wisdom and authenticity. It helps us become what we might have been."

"When we hit puberty, we start worrying about fitting in and being popular. And we become the subjects and objects of other people's lives."

"Older women are the largest demographic in the world. If we can go back and redefine ourselves and become whole, this will create a cultural shift in the world, and it will give an example to younger generations so that they can re-conceive their own lifespan."