I was raised by strong women, and that DNA is in my daughter and wife.

The most difficult thing is the decision to act, the rest is merely tenacity. The fears are paper tigers. You can do anything you decide to do. You can act to change and control your life; and the procedure, the process is its own reward.

There is no man on Earth or devil in Hell who can keep you from the very best God put in you.

Feeling like you’re respected among the people who do the same thing you do is incredible and necessary.

I believe that the greatest gift you can give your family and the world is a healthy you.

I want to represent… to the kids to draw strength from me. So they can see that everybody goes through something, but you can rise up and do your best. Just try.

You may write me down in history with your bitter, twisted lines. You may trod me in the very dirt, but still, like dust, I’ll rise.

To lose one parent may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness.

I was not raised with wealth or resources or any social standing to speak of.

We forge the chains we wear in life.

With realization of one’s own potential and self-confidence in one’s ability, one can build a better world.

I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of man to elevate his life by conscious endeavor.

Once you have six children, you’re committed.

If there is anything that a man can do well, I say let him do it. Give him a chance.

I have to tell you, my seven-year-old granddaughter said to my daughter, her mother, ‚So what’s the big deal about Grandma Maddy having been Secretary of State? Only girls are Secretaries of State.‘ Most of her lifetime, it’s true. But at the time it really was a big deal.

I was a grade B housewife, maybe a B minus. But when I got time to write, I would be unable to finish a sentence. I had anxiety attacks. Partly it was a way of personifying the situation because I couldn’t breathe. I was surrounded by people and by duties. I was a housewife and the children’s mother, and I was judged on how I performed those roles.

Charity is injurious unless it helps the recipient to become independent of it.

He who is overly attached to his family members experiences fear and sorrow, for the root of all grief is attachment. Thus one should discard attachment to be happy.

I don’t worry about stress. I create it.

I had a C-section, and I found it fascinating. I didn’t find it a sacrifice, and I didn’t find it a painful experience. I found it a fascinating miracle of what a body can do.

I was set free because my greatest fear had been realized, and I still had a daughter who I adored, and I had an old typewriter and a big idea. And so rock bottom became a solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life.

Who will take responsibility for raising the next generation?

I want the world to see my body.

You can choose a future where more Americans have the chance to gain the skills they need to compete, no matter how old they are or how much money they have. Education was the gateway to opportunity for me. It was the gateway for Michelle. And now more than ever, it is the gateway to a middle-class life.

I have said this many times, that there seems to be enough room in the world for mediocre men, but not for mediocre women, and we really have to work very, very hard.

I want to work; then, as my kids get older, I want to have adventures. I want to visit all their countries: learn and live inside all their cultures.

By improving health, empowering women, population growth comes down.

I found it hard to be young. When I was married in my twenties, I hated being regarded as ‚the little wife.‘ You don’t know what it was like then! I’d never even written a cheque. I had to ask my husband for money for groceries.

I have only one counsel for you – be master.

I’m not one icon. I’m every icon. I’m an icon that is made out of all the colors on the palette at every time. I have no restrictions. No restrictions.

You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth.

Certainly in the next 50 years we shall see a woman president, perhaps sooner than you think. A woman can and should be able to do any political job that a man can do.

Only those who want everything done for them are bored.

You must take personal responsibility. You cannot change the circumstances, the seasons, or the wind, but you can change yourself. That is something you have charge of.

If you’re too big to fit into fashion, then you just have to do your own fashion.

My mother and my father have been married 50 years, and he’s just started to understand that something’s wrong with the system. He accepted the whole thing, you see. Yet this industrious kind of engagement didn’t bring him the success, according to American terms, that he wanted. I was probably affected by this very much. In fact, I know I was.

To lead people walk behind them.

My son has died of AIDS.

My work and my family are very important to me.

Too often the great decisions are originated and given form in bodies made up wholly of men, or so completely dominated by them that whatever of special value women have to offer is shunted aside without expression.

Well the protester I think is a very powerful thing. It’s basically a mechanism of democracy that, along with capitalism, scientific innovation, those things have built the modern world. And it’s wonderful that the new tools have empowered that protestor so that state secrets, bad developments are not hidden anymore.

The reason that I’m here at all is because of my relationship with my family and their encouragement of me to be a musician and to work hard. As long as I stay there in that space, I can do anything. That’s my truth.

At Columbia Law School, my professor of constitutional law and federal courts, Gerald Gunther, was determined to place me in a federal court clerkship, despite what was then viewed as a grave impediment: On graduation, I was the mother of a 4-year-old child.

Traditions are a common part of our lives. They can be good, and not all traditions are wrong, but sometimes they can take the joy out of life.

The expression a woman wears on her face is far more important than the clothes she wears on her back.

My experiences in life are getting bigger and better. The more stuff I do, the more stuff I talk about – having kids, traveling, going through relationship problems, dealing with things in my own family. All that stuff builds character.

The thing I want more than anything else? I want to have children. I used to feel for every child I had, I would adopt another.

Maria is the best reason to come home.

Sometimes it is better to light a flamethrower than curse the darkness.

No man is free who is not master of himself.

Think about what people are doing on Facebook today. They’re keeping up with their friends and family, but they’re also building an image and identity for themselves, which in a sense is their brand. They’re connecting with the audience that they want to connect to. It’s almost a disadvantage if you’re not on it now.

The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don’t have any.

This is a moment that I deeply wish my parents could have lived to share. My father would have enjoyed what you have so generously said of me-and my mother would have believed it.

What did I owe the rest of the world? Nothing.

We are Divine enough to ask and we are important enough to receive.

You are not a problem that needs solving.

The first decade of the twentieth century was not a great time to be born black and poor and female in St. Louis, Missouri, but Vivian Baxter was born black and poor, to black and poor parents. Later she would grow up and be called beautiful. As a grown woman she would be known as the butter-colored lady with the blowback hair.

Let each become all that he was created capable of being.

My mom cleaned toilets for a long time, and she’d seen a lot of terrible things, but she was still the strength of our family. And there are women like that all across the country – all around the world – who show that type of fortitude.

If you don’t like something, change it. If you can’t change it, change your attitude.

Remember: your bosses prefer to keep you in dependent positions. It is in their interest that you do not become self-reliant, and so they will tend to hoard information. You must secretly work against this and seize this information for yourself.