Quotes About Empowerment

If you're trapped in a room, and nobody is coming to save you, what can you do? You have to bang on the walls and break the windows. You have to climb out and save yourself. It's obvious, Li-ling, that crying doesn't help a person live.

She did not know how or why, but now that she understood, now that she had come to a decision, the old fears had drained away.

The dress must not hang on the body but follow its lines. It must accompany its wearer and when a woman smiles the dress must smile with her.

Because to take away a man's freedom of choice, even his freedom to make the wrong choice, is to manipulate him as though he were a puppet and not a person.

We are never free of our past, but we can be free of its unwanted intrusion into our relationship with our children and the ways in which we choose to parent. Being a parent gives us the extraordinary opportunity for a "do-over." Once again we are in a parent-child relationship, but this time we hold the cards. We can use the best of what we learned from our own parents and change the things that were out of synch or hurtful. This time around, we get to choose.

When you allow your child to palm off responsibility you encourage the idea that someone else is responsible both for the problem and for fixing it. This attitude is bound to make your child less competent and therefore lower his self-esteem. Even when others have a hand in your child's distress, which will happen, teach your child to take responsibility for his own life.

I will not be like a bird bred in a cage, I thought, too dull to fly even when the door stands open.

It is a common saying that women are delicate creatures, flowers, eggs, anything that may be crushed in a moment's carelessness. If I had ever believed it, I no longer did.

With every step I felt lighter. An emotion was swelling in my throat. It took me a moment to recognize what it was. I had been old and stern for so long, carved with regrets and years like a monolith. But that was only a shape I had been poured into. I did not have to keep it.

I will not sentence myself to such a living death.

I will not be like a bird bred in a cage, I thought, too dull to fly even when the door stands open. I stepped into those woods and my life began.

she was not ruled by appetites; she ruled with them instead.

The spells hung on us yet I felt weightless.

I thought: I cannot bear this world a moment longer. Then, child, make another.

Patroclus. I have given enough to them. I will not give them this." After that, there was nothing more to say.

there was something in me that was sick of fear and aw, of gazing at the heavens and wondering what someone would allow me

Day upon patient day, you must throw out your errors and begin again. So why did I not mind? [...] For a hundred generations, I had walked the world drowsy and dull, idle and at my ease. I left no prints, I did no deeds. Even those who had loved me a little did not care to stay. Then I learned that I could bend the world to my will, as a bow is bent for an arrow.

With every step I felt lighter. An emotion was swelling in my throat. It took me a long time to recognize what it was. I had been old and stern for so long, carved with regrets and years like a monolith. But that was only a shape I had been poured into. I did not have to keep it.

You are a golden goddess, beautiful and kind. If I had such a sister, I would never let her go.

dux femina facti.

The world is the same world. You make it or you don't make it, honey. Nobody picks you up and brushes you off and gives you another run at it.

Good management consist of showing average people how to do the work of superior people.

It is the first responsibility of every citizen to question authority.

The real power of effective leadership is maximizing other people's potential which inevitably demands also ensuring that they get the credit. When our ego won't let us build another person up, when everything has to build us up, then the effectiveness of the organization reverts to depending instead on how good we are in the technical aspects of what we do. And we have stopped leading and inspiring others to great heights.