“IF EVERYONE HAS A full circle of human qualities to complete, then progress lies in the direction we haven’t been.” 

“Citizens who refuse to obey anything but their own conscience can transform countries, it is the basis of any real democracy.” 

“Then, as if in answer to a riddle posed years before, you will realize that this growth came from seeds you planted or watered or carried from place to place—and you’ll be rewarded in the way that we as communal beings need most: you’ll know you made a difference.” 

“You can travel without traveling, and you can not travel -- yet travel. Being on the road is a state of mind.” 

“In fact, caucus, a word derived from the Algonquin languages, better reflected the layers of talking circles and the goal of consensus that were at the heart of governance.” 

“In the words of so many daughters who don’t yet know that a female fate is not a personal fault, I told myself: I’m not going to be anything like my mother.” 

“Anybody can be with you when you’re right, but only friends are with you when you mess up.” 

“Never having seen women play chess, they assumed this game wasn't for them and without even a female teacher as role model, they dropped out.” 

“Altogether, I can't imagine technology replacing bookstores completely, any more than movies about a country replace going there.” 

“It was the first time I witnessed the ancient and modern magic of groups in which anyone may speak in turn, everyone must listen, and consensus is more important than time.” 

“In our weeks of talk, movies and friendship, I watched as Wilma turned a medical ordeal into one more event in her life, but not its definition. I believe she was teaching me an intimate form of The Way. In her words: "Every day is a good day - because we are part of everything alive.” 

“Women are always better liked if we sacrifice ourselves for something bigger—and something bigger always means including men, even though something bigger for men doesn’t usually mean including women. In” 

“The best way for us to cultivate fearlessness in our daughters and other young women is by example. If they see their mothers and other women in their lives going forward despite fear, they'll know it's possible.” 

“She acquired a lifetime aversion to the phrases bless your heart and poor dears.” 

“Childbirth is more admirable than conquest, more amazing than self-defense, and as courageous as either one.” 

“As always, self-esteem had created an ability to be generous.” 

“More than a third of all the men, women, and children on this march perished from cold, starvation, and disease. Thanks to President Andrew Jackson’s Indian Removal Act, Cherokee land was left to white farmers who used it to grow cotton with slave labor and to mine gold.” 

“Without leaps of the imagination, or dreaming, we lose the excitement of possibilities. Dreaming, after all, is a form of planning” 

“Without leaps of the imagination, or dreaming, we lose the excitement of possibilities. Dreaming, after all, is a form of planning” 

“PLANNING AHEAD IS A measure of class. The rich and even the middle class plan for future generations, but the poor can plan ahead only a few weeks or days.” 

“That’s why male adults, and some females too, experience the presence of a strong woman as a dangerous regression to a time of their own vulnerability and dependence.” 

“She didn’t put her finger to the wind; she became the wind.” 

“What I really want to say: That what the world really needs is a real feeling of kinship. Everybody: stars, laborers, Negroes, Jews, Arabs. We are all brothers. Please don’t make me a joke. End the interview with what I believe.” 

“I’m also now immune to politicians who say, “I’ve traveled the length and breadth of this great land, and I know…” I’ve traveled more than any of them, and I don’t know.” 

“Perhaps because women are seen as good listeners, I find that a traveling woman—perhaps especially a traveling feminist—becomes a kind of celestial bartender.” 

“Women have to learn how to talk as much as we listen. Men have to learn how to listen as much as they talk.” 

“American travel seems to need an advocate.” 

“Men can be just as loving and nurturing as women-- it's a libel on men to say they can't-- but we all learn by example. Boys just need nurturing men in their lives so they know it's okay for them to be nurturing.” 

“There is a healthier self within each of us, just wating for encouragement” 

“she seemed both proud and scared that I was where she had once wished to be.” 

“Change seems recognizable only after it’s happened, like putting one’s foot down for a familiar stair—and it’s not there.” 

“The media are not reality; reality is reality.” 

“Pound for pound, she was stronger than Arnold Schwarzenegger.” 

“the discovery that ordinary people are smart, smart people are ordinary,” 

“I took a part-time editing job to pay the rent. It was work I could do at home, but when suddenly I was expected to spend two days a week in the office, I quit, bought an ice cream cone, and walked the sunny streets of Manhattan.” 

“the clearest view is always from the bottom. Kennedy” 

“Despite all their faults, campaigns are based on the fact that every vote counts, and therefore every person counts. As freestanding societies, they are more open than academia, more idealistic than corporations, more unifying than religions, and more accessible than government itself.” 

“I began to sense that a big part of our problem is simple ignorance of what the oldest cultures have to teach.” 

“Just pause, let the audience absorb the hostility, then say, ‘I didn’t pay him to say that.’ ” 

“Roots can exist without flowers, but no flower can exist without roots. Religion may be a flower, but people are its roots.” 

“Our current plight is not made inevitable by human nature. What once was could be again—in a new way.” 

“Campaign season is the only time of public debate about what we want for the future. It can change consciousness even more than who gets elected. In short, campaigns may be the closest thing we have to democracy itself.” 

“would I have known that mystery leaves a space for us when certainty does not? And would I have dared to challenge rules later in life if my father had obeyed them?” 

“The irony here is that thanks to molecular archaeology—which includes the study of ancient DNA to trace human movement over time—we now know that men have been the stay-at-homes, and women have been the travelers. The rate of intercontinental migration for women is about eight times that for men.” 

“The irony here is that thanks to molecular archaeology—which includes the study of ancient DNA to trace human movement over time—we now know that men have been the stay-at-homes, and women have been the travelers. The rate of intercontinental migration for women is about eight times that for men.”  “I myself cried when I got angry, then became unable to explain why I was angry in the first place. Later I would discover this was endemic among female human beings. Anger is supposed to be "unfeminine", so we suppress it-until it overflows.” 

“Among their first questions was said to be: Where are the women?” 

“I'm not black on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, and a woman on Thursday, Friday and Saturday” 

“the most revolutionary act for a woman will be a self-willed journey—and to be welcomed when she comes home.” 

“we don’t know which of our acts in the present will shape the future. But” 

“Everyone has a home but me.”