“One of the best investments we can make in a child’s life is high-quality early education.”

No, you can’t deny women their basic rights and pretend it’s about your ‘religious freedom’. If you don’t like birth control, don’t use it. Religious freedom doesn’t mean you can force others to live by your own beliefs.

Reading makes all other learning possible. We have to get books into our children’s hands early and often.

We don’t turn back. We leave no one behind. We pull each other up.

The worst thing that colonialism did was to cloud our view of our past.

Change will not come if we wait for some other person, or if we wait for some other time. We are the ones we’ve been waiting for. We are the change that we seek.

When our government is spoken of as some menacing, threatening foreign entity, it ignores the fact that, in our democracy, government is us.

Don’t just get involved. Fight for your seat at the table. Better yet, fight for a seat at the head of the table.

If you’re walking down the right path and you’re willing to keep walking, eventually you’ll make progress.

Climate change constitutes a serious threat to global security.

Greatness is never free; it must be earned.

For we know that our patchwork heritage is a strength, not a weakness.

Find somebody to be successful for. Raise their hopes. Rise to their needs.

Take off your bedroom slippers, put on your marching shoes. Shake it off. Stop complaining, stop grumbling, stop crying. We are going to press on. We’ve got work to do.

The future belongs to young people with an education and the imagination to create.

A nation ringed by walls will only imprison itself.

Why can’t I just eat my waffle?

I have come to believe that in order to thrive, a child must have at least one adult in her life who shows her unconditional love, respect, and confidence.

If I agree to dispose of any part of our land to the white people I would feel guilty of taking food away from our children’s mouths, and I do not wish to be that mean.

I think a lot of parents live their lives through the kids. Because they didn’t make it [achieve something], they want their kids to make it. It puts a lot of undue pressure on the kids.

After a point, it doesn’t matter where you come from. There are many star kids who haven’t done well in the industry and rank newcomers who have done amazingly well.

If I ever have a child. Insh’allah I will. I wish it’s a girl. I want a girl child.

Even while living in the world, the heart of Mary was so filled with motherly tenderness and compassion for men that no-one ever suffered so much for their own pains, as Mary suffered for the pains of her children.

The serpent, the king, the tiger, the stinging wasp, the small child, the dog owned by other people, and the fool: these seven ought not to be awakened from sleep.

I don’t teach my children what is Hindu and what is Muslim.