“Far too many people are looking for the right person, instead of trying to be the right person.”

Once we give up searching for approval we often find it easier to earn respect.

Women can be vivacious. We are allowed more varieties of facial expression and gestures. Men must be rocklike.

Any woman who chooses to behave like a full human being should be warned that the armies of the status quo will treat her as something of a dirty joke. That’s their natural and first weapon. She will need her sisterhood.

The story of women’s struggle for equality belongs to no single feminist nor to any one organization but to the collective efforts of all who care about human rights

Feminism has never been about getting a job for one woman. It’s about making life more fair for women everywhere. It’s not about a piece of the existing pie; there are too many of us for that. It’s about baking a new pie.

learning must travel the distance from head to heart.

What I think we need to do is infuse everyday and every action with the kind of values we hope will be in the future, with kindness, with nurturing, with dreams, ambition, using your talents, not resorting to violence, other forms of conflict resolution, with humor, with poetry, with music.

Women have two choices: Either she’s a feminist or a masochist.

The purpose of feminism is to free the uniqueness of the individual and to understand that inside each of us is a unique human being who is a combination of heredity and environment.

Life after 50 or 60 is itself another country, as different as adolescence is from childhood, or as adulthood is from adolescence – and just as adventurous.

If you really want to be lonely, get married.

But somewhere within each of us, buried at varying depths depending on the age and degree of neglect or abuse, shame or coercion we endured, there is a resistant, daydreaming, rebellious, creative, unique child — a true self who is waiting.

Empathy is the most radical of human emotions.

Helping begins with listening.

The origins of violence against women by men are not biological. If that were the case, it would exist in every culture. And it doesn’t exist in every culture.

So whatever you want to do, just do it… Making a damn fool of yourself is absolutely essential.

Here, sir, the people govern; here they act by their immediate representatives.

Just to know that the people in my city are really rocking with me, I just love it.

I always knew I could rap, and in a sense, I always rapped. And I’ve always behaved like a rapper. But I started to take it seriously when I recorded with the people of Brick when I started to receive some money.

The will of the people is the source and the happiness of the people the end of all legitimate government upon earth.

From seeds of his body blossomed the flower that liberated a people and touched the soul of a nation.

I definitely feel like people in the South are a little more raw. Our whole swag, the way we talk, When I go to the East Coast, people automatically know I’m not from there.

Dangerous ambition more often lurks behind the specious mask of zeal for the rights of the people than under the forbidden appearance of zeal for the firmness and efficiency of government.

And Barack and I were raised with so many of the same values, like you work hard for what you want in life. That your word is your bond; that you do what you say you’re going to do. That you treat people with dignity and respect, even if you don’t know them and even if you don’t agree with them.