Quotes About Empowerment

Why had I wasted all my time pretending to be someone I wasn't? I was tired, so very, very tired of standing on my own brakes. I felt...right. I felt free.

I've come to believe that the word 'disabled' is a misnomer. 'Disabled' implies that you are broken beyond use. No longer functional. I'm quite abled.

I want to reach everybody, from the little girls who are 3 years old, to the grandmother who watches my soap, to a young man in love.

When I was a young man, I worked at the Boys and Girls Club in St. Louis, Missouri, and another boys club called Matthews-Dickey.

People often ask me why I choose to primarily play queer characters, and my answer is that as a queer man, I choose to align myself with projects in which I can be of service for a purpose greater than myself: to be for an audience of queer people of color, something I didn't have the privilege of seeing as a young man.

After marching across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma as a young man, John Lewis went on to become a legendary leader for civil rights alongside other giants of the movement like Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth.

I saw women that were repressed. When they're in classes with young men, they shut up all the time. They're laughed at if they have unusual ideas. They have to be sexy; then, they can't really think.

You have young men of color in many communities who are more likely to end up in jail or in the criminal justice system than they are in a good job or in college. And, you know, part of my job, that I can do, I think, without any potential conflicts, is to get at those root causes.

In too many communities, too many young men of color are left behind and seen only as objects of fear. Through initiatives like My Brother's Keeper, I'm personally committed to changing both perception and reality.

It's young men like Greg Olsen and Eric Reid, who are going to change this world and make it a better place.

I think young men and boys are taught to fail. It's nothing to them; they do sport, they fall over, they shout, 'I'm all right,' and carry on. But with girls, they're so appallingly embarrassed to fail, it's like it's considered unfeminine.

There are a lot of good men out there who just need a little direction and leadership in order for them to offer what they have to young men and boys.

If there is a thread that unites all of our work, whether it's in Iowa or whether it's in Maryland or whether it's among our young men and women in Iraq and Afghanistan, I believe that it's the thread of human dignity.

I'm a dad; I started a program for young men when my first child was born.

In India, at the community level, young men are playing an absolutely essential role in changing the cultural norms and deeply held practices concerning women. They are doing this in a way that not only empowers women and girls, but really empowers the young men as well.

In the underdeveloped countries, we have young men and women, many of them of capacity but without opportunity to improve themselves. They cannot do so without help.

Young men in my day really stepped up... These were champions for freedom, equality, and justice for all human beings, and they were educated individuals that used their education and knowledge to represent their case.

We're living in a time, unfortunately, where, you know, a lot of young men, particularly young men of color, being raised by single mothers. And their mothers so desperately want to connect with them, but I found, in talking with a lot of young men, that sometimes it's difficult.

Team Griffin Foundation is a foundation trying to inspire young men and women to give them organization, give them something to have, kind of like when I was growing up. I had people who were supporting me, giving me the right tools that I needed to be able to achieve my dreams.

The first thing I organized around was the Central Park Five case for the young men who were accused. We talked about the unfair misrepresentation of these young teenagers in the media. I've been fighting back against Donald Trump for a long time.

The young men of India need us to do more for them. And we need to do it for men in their own right, and we need to do it even more urgently if we really want women to be empowered too.

It doesn't inspire young men and women struggling with their own sexuality to be confident in who they are if I'm not confident in who I am.

Young men and women of color get told 'no' by so many people. But just listen to your inner voice. Amplify it. Make it strong!

We have the power, as lawmakers, to find ways to support our young men and identify solutions to the hardships they regularly experience.