“A child’s course in life should be determined not by the zip code she’s born in, but by the strength of her work ethic and the scope of her dreams.”

History doesn’t always move in a straight line. Sometimes it zigs and zags.

A nation that can’t control its energy sources can’t control its future.

It’s important to make sure that we’re talking with each other in a way that heals, not in a way that wounds.

It should be the power of our vote, not the size of our bank accounts, that drives our democracy.

When our interests and values are at stake, we have a responsibility to act.

In the face of impossible odds, people who love this country can change it.

We must act, knowing that our work will be imperfect.

While we breathe, we will hope.

I’m a warrior for the middle class.

The best judge of whether or not a country is going to develop is how it treats its women

The best judge of whether or not a country is going to develop is how it treats its women

You can put lipstick on a pig. It’s still a pig.

Change is never easy, but always possible.

Who you are and who you love should never be a fireable offense.

You might be locked in a world not of your own making, her eyes said, but you still have a claim on how it is shaped. You still have responsibilities.

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.

Perfect behaviour is born of complete indifference.

History is a pact between the dead, the living, and the yet unborn.

Life is the coexistence of all opposite values. Joy and sorrow, pleasure and pain, up and down, hot and cold, here and there, light and darkness, birth and death. All experience is by contrast, and one would be meaningless without the other.

Effective leaders are made, not born. They learn from trial and error, and from experience.

Because every day of your life was written on God’s calendar before you were born, everything that happens to you has spiritual significance.

Islam, at the moment, is the motherlode of bad ideas.

It’s pointless to cry. One is born and dies alone.

This is my soul skin. Born from the dust, blooming from within.