Quotes About Empowerment

My mother saw her mother... her father walked out when they were very young and it was a lot of, I'd say more verbal abuse than physical, but it was the same. And my mother, back in the 70s, became an advocate for victims of domestic violence way before anybody in the Legislature was talking about it.

At 16, I walked around knowing I'd get chased and attacked for dressing a certain way - I felt I had an undeniable right to be who I wanted to be. My father said to hit them back, but I was never much good at that. So I developed a big mouth instead of a quick right hook.

Head Start has a proven track-record of success in Central Virginia, and millions of Americans have walked through its doors and benefited from the foundation it provides.

My mom was a '70s mom. She paved a road that no one had yet walked.

I've walked on hot coals with Tony Robbins.

For someone like me who, as a kid, walked to school muttering little political speeches to myself, it was irresistible to finally get a chance at political life for real. When the people of Etobicoke-Lakeshore elected me their MP, it changed me forever.

I did organize something in high school like a school walkout. These kids were locked up in their school, they weren't allowed out, but 3,000 school kids from Sydney walked out and protested. And I organized it from my mom's office at work. And I was 12.

I had a second-degree-blue-belt test, and I broke two boards with my right foot, and the next day I walked into school, and no one ever picked on me again. I suddenly believed in myself and respected myself. I had some inkling of my power, so the bullying stopped instantly.

Even in the early Eighties, when I was one of the most successful models in Britain, I didn't really have a voice. Time after time, when I should have spoken up, I simply walked away.

I walked into an international economics tutorial, and the professor said, 'I don't know how to teach a woman.' I said, 'It's the same as teaching a man.' I just sat down, and he had no choice but to start teaching. When I handed in my first paper, I think that shut him up.

I walked into the gym not even knowing what jiu-jitsu or MMA and all that was. I was looking to lose baby weight after I had my son.

Madam Walker, as part of the first generation out of slavery, really was inventing the way that she operated in the world.

Madam Walker was a woman who transformed herself in a very American, rags-to-riches way.

I've always been fascinated by Madam Walker's ability to use her money for political causes. I find her story so inspires people that it gives me great joy to share the story.

I hope that people will be inspired by Madam Walker's story. I hope that they will see her as a complex human being, and that they will want to dig more deeply, that they will want to know the details of her life.

Madame Walker selected Indianapolis as the headquarters for her growing business more than a century ago in 1910 because of its central location and thriving black business community.

Many people have told me that once they learn of Madam Walker's accomplishments they are surprised, even embarrassed, that they have never heard of her. But they shouldn't be. Her extraordinary story was simply omitted from the history books.

A lot of people think Oprah is channeling for Madam Walker, and there are lots of parallels.

I think that the first book that made me think that I could try to be a writer - or that made me aware that a young black woman from the South could write about the South - was Alice Walker's 'The Color Purple,' which I read for the first time when I was in junior high.

Madam C.J. Walker was the first person to devise and scale a business model that addressed the hair care and beauty needs of women of color while also challenging the myopic ideals of the beauty industry at that time.

Like so many women aspiring and working to create the life they desire, Madam Walker lived with a vision that was beyond her time - a vision for the way that things could be, not the way they were.

The first female DPs that I was aware of were Ellen Kuras, Mandy Walker, Nancy Schreiber, Amy Vincent, Sandi Sissel, Maryse Alberti and Tami Reiker. You look for a role model as somebody who looks like yourself and is doing what you want to do; they were the handful.

In order to survive, I created a certain type of aura about myself that I was the baddest chick walking down the street. Anytime somebody underestimates me, Thug Rose comes out.

I'm a feminist. The women in my books in recent years have been powerful characters and I love to see a woman with a cute bottom walking past.