The battle for women’s rights has been largely won.

I knew through the surgeries that he was on my side and that this wasn’t something where I was gonna feel less of a woman, because my husband wasn’t gonna let that happen.

All of us are mentors. You’re mentors right here and now. And one of the things I’ve always done throughout my life, I have always found that person, that group of people that I was going to reach my hand out and help bring them along with me.

At the end of the day, women are a distraction. Whether you realize it or not.

Be the hunter, not the hunted.

They’re right to think that about me, because I’m the person most likely to sleep with my female fans, I genuinely love other women. And I think they know that.

I think feminists are unaware of the tremendous extent of the role of women in history.

How fortunate I was to be alive and a lawyer when, for the first time in United States history, it became possible to urge, successfully, before legislatures and courts, the equal-citizenship stature of women and men as a fundamental constitutional principle.

It’s every girl’s dream to be a cover girl!

If you don’t like how things are, change it! You’re not a tree.

In our society, the women who break down barriers are those who ignore limits.

I believe that if you show people the problems and you show them the solutions they will be moved to act.

The more you know of your history, the more liberated you are.

I grew up in the South under segregation. So, I know what terrorism feels like – when your father could be taken out in the middle of the night and lynched just because he didn’t look like he was in an obeying frame of mind when a white person said something he must do. I mean, that’s terrorism, too.

You don’t have to fear defeat if you believe it may reveal powers that you didn’t know you possessed.

Every man gotta right to decide his own destiny.

The poetry you read has been written for you, each of you – black, white, Hispanic, man, woman, gay, straight.

No greater injury can be done to any youth than to let him feel that because he belongs to this or that race he will be advanced in life regardless of his own merits or efforts.

To be a Negro in this country and to be relatively conscious is to be in a rage almost all the time.

There is no question that liberals do an impressive job of expressing concern for blacks. But do the intentions expressed in their words match the actual consequences of their deeds?

In oneself lies the whole world and if you know how to look and learn, the door is there and the key is in your hand. Nobody on earth can give you either the key or the door to open, except yourself.

Today, Negroes play on every big league club and in every minor league. With millions of other Negroes in other walks of life, we are willing to stand up and be counted for what we believe in. In baseball or out, we are no longer willing to wait until Judgment Day for equality – we want it here on earth as well as in Heaven.

Agency is a divine gift to you. You are free to choose what you will be and what you will do.

The PC has improved the world in just about every area you can think of. Amazing developments in communications, collaboration and efficiencies. New kinds of entertainment and social media. Access to information and the ability to give a voice people who would never have been heard.

I like to be in control of how I look and how I feel and how I act.

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

In all my work, in the movies I write, the lyrics, the poetry, the prose, the essays, I am saying that we may encounter many defeats – maybe it’s imperative that we encounter the defeats – but we are much stronger than we appear to be and maybe much better than we allow ourselves to be. Human beings are more alike than unalike.

The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.

Let not him who is houseless pull down the house of another, but let him work diligently and build one for himself, thus by example assuring that his own shall be safe from violence when built.

Today you are you! That is truer than true! There is no one alive who is you-er than you!

Give a boy address and accomplishments and you give him the mastery of palaces and fortunes where he goes.

Remember, if you ever need a helping hand, it’s at the end of your arm, as you get older, remember you have another hand: The first is to help yourself, the second is to help others.

To deny people their human rights is to challenge their very humanity.

Come on, you can’t name a truck after a chick.

If you don’t live your life, then who will?

What we know is that when girls don’t go to school, they earn lower salaries. They get married earlier. They have higher infant and maternal mortality rates. And they’re more likely to contract HIV, less likely to immunize their children.

The age of a woman doesn’t mean a thing. The best tunes are played on the oldest fiddles.

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

I want the world to see my body.

Our goal in the ’70s was to end the closed door era. There were so many things that were off limits to women: policing, firefighting, mining, piloting planes.

Women should be obscene and not heard.

A girl should be two things: classy and fabulous.

Since the world has existed, there has been injustice. But it is one world, the more so as it becomes smaller, more accessible. There is just no question that there is more obligation that those who have should give to those who have nothing.

Nothing is more difficult, and therefore more precious, than to be able to decide.

Enlighten the people generally, and tyranny and oppressions of body and mind will vanish like evil spirits at the dawn of day.

A mother deserves a day off to care for a sick child or sick parent without running into hardship – and you know what, a father does, too. It’s time to do away with workplace policies that belong in a ‚Mad Men‘ episode.

Technology is nothing. What’s important is that you have a faith in people, that they’re basically good and smart, and if you give them tools, they’ll do wonderful things with them.

I know of no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them but to inform their discretion.

For a man to achieve all that is demanded of him he must regard himself as greater than he is.

Give a girl the right shoes, and she can conquer the world.

I am not afraid of an army of lions led by a sheep; I am afraid of an army of sheep led by a lion.

Anybody who has been discriminated against, who comes from a group that’s been discriminated against, knows what it’s like.

The answer to the problem of inequality is for the people who are fortunate enough to either have been gifted or deserved more to do everything they can to make the communities around them as strong as they possibly can.

We reached a high point in my opinion with the passage of the civil rights legislation and Martin Luther King’s success and the crusade of others. I think we kind of breathed a sigh of relief as if we had achieved the end of racial discrimination or white supremacy.

I don’t want people saying, ‚Should we get a female director?‘ I want to hear, ‚Should we get a great director for this movie?‘

The world is before you and you need not take it or leave it as it was when you came in.

The sexiest thing that a woman can do, wear, and say all fall under one word to me: subtlety. To be subtle in the things that she does and the things she says and the things she wears – I appreciate the details.

Peace and justice are two sides of the same coin.

Investing for the poor requires participation from the entire community.

Clever and attractive women do not want to vote; they are willing to let men govern as long as they govern men.

Instead of noblemen, let us have noble villages of men.