I was raised to be an independent woman, not the victim of anything.

Avoid having your ego so close to your position that when your position falls, your ego goes with it.

All the reasonings of men are not worth one sentiment of women.

War is a poor chisel to carve out tomorrow.

No woman should ever be quite accurate about her age. It looks so calculating.

When we look back on all the perils through which we have passed and at the mighty foes that we have laid low and all the dark and deadly designs that we have frustrated, why should we fear for our future? We have come safely through the worst.

Because my dad abused me, I was determined to never let a man tell me what to do. God clearly showed me that I needed to be a submissive wife if I wanted to be effective in ministry. The truth is, if we don’t learn to submit to authority, we won’t ever learn to submit to God.

I can handle pain.

I never do anything that I don’t want to do.

I always knew from that moment, from the time I found myself at home in that little segregated library in the South, all the way up until I walked up the steps of the New York City library, I always felt, in any town, if I can get to a library, I’ll be OK. It really helped me as a child, and that never left me.

A good objective of leadership is to help those who are doing poorly to do well and to help those who are doing well to do even better.

We talk about this concept of openness and transparency as the high-level ideal that we’re moving towards at Facebook. The way that we get there is by empowering people to share and connect. The combination of those two things leads the world to become more open.

Permanence, perseverance and persistence in spite of all obstacles, discouragements, and impossibilities: It is this, that in all things distinguishes the strong soul from the weak.

How poor are they that have not patience! What wound did ever heal but by degrees?

Change is always tough. Even for those who see themselves as agents of change, the process of starting a new thing can cause times of disorientation, uncertainty and insecurity.

Everything you are against weakens you. Everything you are for empowers you.

Have you not learned that strength comes to an ordinary soul when given an extraordinary calling?

I am not afraid… I was born to do this.

We should not give up and we should not allow the problem to defeat us.

I have some good friends of my own who happen to be gay, and when it comes to gay, straight, or whatever, I’m for anything life-affirmative. I’m for gay power, straight power, male power, female power; everybody should feel empowered without oppressing anyone who’s different.

About the time we can make the ends meet, somebody moves the ends.

I’d rather be a victor than a victim.

Sometimes in the past when I played something might make me lose focus, or I would go home after a game where I thought I could have played better and I would let it hang over my head for a long time when it shouldn’t.

I believe in pink. I believe that laughing is the best calorie burner. I believe in kissing, kissing a lot. I believe in being strong when everything seems to be going wrong. I believe that happy girls are the prettiest girls. I believe that tomorrow is another day and I believe in miracles.

I love to see a young girl go out and grab the world by the lapels.

I hope that people around the world will be as inspired as I am to step up and to speak out on behalf of girls around the world who struggle to go to school.

I want people to follow their dreams, yes… but I’m not interested in telling young black kids how to be rappers… I want to show them that there’s so many other paths you can take, besides a rapper or basketball player.

Magic is believing in yourself, if you can do that, you can make anything happen.

I believe that a man is the strongest soldier for daring to die unarmed.

You always want your people to be proud of what you have accomplished.

Be willing to have it so. Acceptance of what has happened is the first step to overcoming the consequences of any misfortune.

If you’re going to change things, you have to be with the people who hold the levers.

While we should never give up our principles, we must also realize that we cannot maintain our principles unless we survive.

Let us be shy no longer. Let us go to our strength. Let us offer hope. Let us tell the world that a new age is not only possible but probable.

I want people to draw strength from me.

Knowledge will forever govern ignorance; and a people who mean to be their own governors must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives.

Dave Mackay is my definition of a superstar. The man broke his leg three times, but wouldn’t be carried off. He walked off.

My mother told me to be a lady. And for her, that meant be your own person, be independent.

It’s not fun to get out of bed early in the morning. When the alarm goes off, it doesn’t sing you a song: it hits you in the head with a baseball bat. So how do you respond to that? Do you crawl underneath your covers and hide? Or do you get up, get aggressive, and attack the day?

My protest about the post exchange seating bore some results. More seats were allocated for blacks, but there were still separate sections for blacks and for whites. At least I had made my men realize that something could be accomplished by speaking out, and I hoped they would be less resigned to unjust conditions.

If the leader is filled with high ambition and if he pursues his aims with audacity and strength of will, he will reach them in spite of all obstacles.

There is nothing happens to any person but what was in his power to go through with.

Even if you have a terminal disease, you don’t have to sit down and mope. Enjoy life and challenge the illness that you have.

Generally speaking, men are held in great esteem in all parts of the world, so why shouldn’t women have their share? Soldiers and war heroes are honored and commemorated, explorers are granted immortal fame, martyrs are revered, but how many people look upon women too as soldiers?

Man is a tool-using animal. Without tools he is nothing, with tools he is all.

I believe there is complete equality between men and women. And I believe those passages in the New Testament, not by Jesus, but by Paul, that say women should not adorn themselves, they should always wear hats or color their hair in church – things like that – I think they are signs of the times and should not apply to modern-day life.

If I can be a leader, I will.

Although the world is full of suffering, it is also full of the overcoming of it.

Your life must be a progression towards ownership – first mentally of your independence, and then physically of your work, owning what you produce.

All that is gold does not glitter, not all those who wander are lost; the old that is strong does not wither, deep roots are not reached by the frost.

I had to prove you could be a new kind of black man. I had to show the world.

Although the circumstances of our lives may seem very disengaged, with me standing here as the First Lady of the United States of America and you just getting through school, I want you to know we have very much in common. For nothing in my life ever would have predicted that I would be standing here as the first African-American First Lady.

Blessed are the hearts that can bend; they shall never be broken.

A gender line… helps to keep women not on a pedestal, but in a cage.

People have this capacity within them to set the world straight.

Shallow men believe in luck. Strong men believe in cause and effect.

A man who does not think for himself does not think at all.

One of the wonderful things about Oprah: She teaches you to keep on stepping.

Put your leaders in stressful scenarios. Make them figure out solutions under pressure. See if you can make them frustrated, angry, and flustered, and then demand decisive leadership from them. They will be challenged at first, but they will get better over time.

Most people already know what they’re doing wrong. When I get them to church I want to tell them that you can change.

I’ve been through natural disasters. I lived down in Miami and was down there for Hurricane Andrew which was a Category 5. There were members of my family that thought they were going to die. Everyone was in the bathtub.