International Women's Day 2015: Top 15 inspirational quotes on women empowerment

The world will celebrate International Women's Day (IWD) on 8 March and this year's theme is Make It Happen.

IWD has been observed since the early 1900s and was established by Socialist International, in their meeting in Copenhagen in 1910. The following year, the first International Women's Day was observed in several countries, including Austria, Denmark, Switzerland and Germany, according to the International Women's Day website.

In 1977, the UN General Assembly adopted a resolution proclaiming a United Nations Day for Women's Rights. The United States allotted the whole month of March as Women's History Month. Countries like Cuba, Belarus, Cambodia, Afganistan, Ukraine have declared Women's Day a national holiday. In China, the day is a holiday for only women.

On the occasion, IBTimes UK has compiled top inspirational quotes on women empowerment.

• "If you want something said, ask a man; if you want something done, ask a woman." - Margaret Thatcher
• "Women who seek to be equal with men lack ambition." - Marilyn Monroe
• "A girl should be two things: classy and fabulous." - Coco Chanel
• "One is not born a woman, but becomes one." - Simone de Beauvoir
• "Women have served all these centuries as looking glasses possessing the magic and delicious power of reflecting the figure of a man at twice its natural size." - Virginia Woolf
• "Whatever glory belongs to the race for a development unprecedented in history for the given length of time, a full share belongs to the womanhood of the race." - Mary Jane McLeod Bethune
• "Whether women are better than men I cannot say - but I can say they are certainly no worse." - Golda Meir
• "A free race cannot be born of slave mothers." - Margaret Higgins Sanger
• "Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away."- Maya Angelou
• "Women are the largest untapped reservoir of talent in the world." - Hillary Clinton
• "Think like a queen. A queen is not afraid to fail. Failure is another stepping stone to greatness." - Oprah Winfrey
• "I really don't think I need buns of steel. I'd be happy with buns of cinnamon." - Ellen DeGeneres
• "Women are leaders everywhere you look -- from the CEO who runs a Fortune 500 company to the housewife who raises her children and heads her household. Our country was built by strong women, and we will continue to break down walls and defy stereotypes." - Nancy Pelosi
• "Women are the real architects of society." - Cher
• "Extremists have shown what frightens them the most: a girl with a book." - Malala Yousafzai