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.

There is no king who has not had a slave among his ancestors, and no slave who has not had a king among his.

When you think about it, Adolf Hitler was the first pop star.

Most people never run far enough on their first wind to find out they’ve got a second.

Predicting rain doesn’t count. Building arks does.

Everybody has forgotten that Russia helped start the Second World War.

Nobody is as powerful as we make them out to be.

Glam really did plant seeds for a new identity. I think a lot of kids needed that – that sense of reinvention. Kids learned that however crazy you may think it is, there is a place for what you want to do and who you want to be.

‚Tis best to weigh the enemy more mighty than he seems.

If atomic bombs are to be added as new weapons to the arsenals of a warring world, or to the arsenals of nations preparing for war, then the time will come when mankind will curse the names of Los Alamos and of Hiroshima.

How many emperors and how many princes have lived and died and no record of them remains, and they only sought to gain dominions and riches in order that their fame might be ever-lasting.

Start wide, expand further, and never look back.

My life as a child did not prepare me for the fact that the world is full of cruel and bitter things.

Sisters, do you realize the breadth and scope of your influence when you speak those things that come to your heart and mind as directed by the Spirit?

Don’t swap horses in crossing a stream.

Take things as they are. Punch when you have to punch. Kick when you have to kick.

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.

You have to believe in your process. You have to believe in the things that you are doing to help the team win. I think you have to take the good with the bad.

I have quite a decent constitution in spite of all my abuse of it and my advanced years. I’m still quite robust.

It is no use saying, ‚We are doing our best.‘ You have got to succeed in doing what is necessary.

You drown not by falling into a river, but by staying submerged in it.

I find with most of my readers are kind of like me, sort of people who were a little bit naive in life and then learned the hard way that this is what’s going on, the political games and most of my readers write to me telling me that the book helped them open their eyes to what other people are doing to them.

I’m afraid the SS’s relationship with the Catholic Church is something the Church still has to deal with and does not deny.

I’m interested in women’s health because I’m a woman. I’d be a darn fool not to be on my own side.

For Africa to me… is more than a glamorous fact. It is a historical truth. No man can know where he is going unless he knows exactly where he has been and exactly how he arrived at his present place.

It took me quite a long time to develop a voice, and now that I have it, I am not going to be silent.

By giving people the power to share, we’re making the world more transparent.

Poetry is finer and more philosophical than history; for poetry expresses the universal, and history only the particular.

A feeble body weakens the mind.

The way of the Creative works through change and transformation, so that each thing receives its true nature and destiny and comes into permanent accord with the Great Harmony: this is what furthers and what perseveres.

Sudden resolutions, like the sudden rise of mercury in a barometer, indicate little else than the variability of the weather.

I look like a woman, but I think like a man.

I stayed focused, and I never surrendered, and now I’ve been blessed. now I take care of my mother, my father, and my entire whole family.

Never stop fighting until you arrive at your destined place – that is, the unique you. Have an aim in life, continuously acquire knowledge, work hard, and have perseverance to realise the great life.

Under the worst conditions, horrendous conditions, people still, you know, fight for their rights and don’t just succumb.

It is written on the arched sky; it looks out from every star. It is the poetry of Nature; it is that which uplifts the spirit within us.

Those 62 million girls who are not being educated around the world impact my life in Washington, D.C., in the United States of America. Because if we aren’t empowering and providing the skills and the resources to half of our population, then we’re not realizing our full potential as a society, as mankind.

I don’t think of poetry as a ‚rational‘ activity but as an aural one. My poems usually begin with words or phrases which appeal more because of their sound than their meaning, and the movement and phrasing of a poem are very important to me.

O‘ What may man within him hide, though angel on the outward side!

I probably wouldn’t have made it this far if I were a refugee.

Success is due to our stretching to the challenges of life. Failure comes when we shrink from them.

I attribute my success to this – I never gave or took any excuse.

Let me embrace thee, sour adversity, for wise men say it is the wisest course.

I think women want freedom. They want to be empowered. They want hope. They want love; they want all the things that I want, and I’m not afraid to say those things and act on them, and I think that’s why they identify with me.

I’ve always felt heroic about my life… As a child, I remember little girls in the playground moaning about how boys could do more than they could. I didn’t think that was the case at all. My parents didn’t treat me as a girl.

I am sometimes sad when I hear the personal stories of Tibetan refugees who have been tortured or beaten. Some irritation, some anger comes. But it never lasts long. I always try to think at a deeper level, to find ways to console.

In the early 1940s, as a young teenager, I was utterly appalled by the racist and jingoist hysteria of the anti-Japanese propaganda. The Germans were evil, but treated with some respect: They were, after all, blond Aryan types, just like our imaginary self-image. Japanese were mere vermin, to be crushed like ants.

When my ancestors came from Africa, they were shackled by our neck, our wrists, and our ankles in steel chains. I’ve turned those steel chains into gold to symbolize the fact that I’m still a slave, only my price tag is higher.

I know a lot of athletes and models are written off as just bodies. I never felt used for my body.

Leadership is absolutely vital if there are comparable countries which can affect the security of the world you live in. Between Lincoln and Roosevelt’s time, America was protected by huge oceans and, in practice, by the British navy. Today, it’s different, and the obsession of the Obama administration has been for retrenchment.

The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.

History is written by the victors.

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.

A kingdom founded on injustice never lasts.

When one door is closed, don’t you know, another is open.

Since the time of the witch burnings, the grandmothers and the healers and the midwives have been systematically targeted. And burned at the stake for hundreds of years, decimating whole communities.

I’m no natural beauty. If I’m gonna have any looks at all, I’m gonna have to create them.

I said on the equality side of it, that it is essential to a woman’s equality with man that she be the decision-maker, that her choice be controlling.

When General Allenby conquered Jerusalem during World War I, he was hailed in the American press as Richard the Lion-Hearted, who had at last won the Crusades and driven the pagans out of the Holy Land.

When things are going bad, don’t get all bummed out. Don’t get startled; don’t get frustrated. If you can say the word ‚good,‘ guess what? It means you’re still alive. It means you’re still breathing.

It’s like a muscle – if you stop going to the gym or stop running, you get weak. The military teaches you these great values, but we don’t keep up the discipline on our own, and we lose it. So wherever you go, keep that discipline up.