“Thinking about our schooling in different decades and parts of the country, all three of us in that kitchen discover that we were taught more about ancient Greece and Rome than about the history of the land we live on. We learned about the pyramid builders of Egypt but not the pyramid builders of the Mississippi River.” 

“MY LAST HOPE IS to open up the road—literally. So far it’s been overwhelmingly masculine turf. Men embody adventure, women embody hearth and home, and that has been pretty much it.” 

“Secrets have power only as long as they are secret.” 

“There is power in proximity. Get close to the problem you feel drawn to. Change the narrative. Stay hopeful. Be willing to do uncomfortable things.” 

“The uncomfortable truth seems to be that the amount of talk by women has been measured less against the amount of men's talk than against the expectation of female silence.” 

“Everyone has a home but me.” 

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

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

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

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

“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.” 

“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.” 

“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?” 

“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.” 

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

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

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

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

“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.” 

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

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

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

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