Quotes About Empowerment

Being an old maid is like death by drowning, a really delightful sensation after you cease to struggle.

If it's freedom you want, come to Texas. No one there tells you what to do and how you have to do it.

It's been my experience, observed Emma McChesney, that when a firm condescends to pay a woman twice as much as a man, that means she's worth six times as much.

I'm tired of hearing you men say that this and that and the other isn't woman's work. Any work is woman's work that a woman can do well.

Life is hard when you have no one to stick up for you. People push you around, purely because there's no one to stop them from pushing you around.

Thank god I'm gay! It's so liberating!

We define ourselves by the best that is in us, not the worst that has been done to us.

We were the brothers 'holding it down' on the business side of the magazine, but it would have to be the 'sisters,' black women, who let it fly on the editorial side.

On the sale of Essence Communications Inc: What I would first learn is something that Suzanne de Passe, the legendary Hollywood producer who headed Motown Productions, commented on thirty years ago when there was talk of Motown being sold: 'In a certain way black people seem to feel that black companies owe them something extra, the kind of something extra that cannot be given if you want to stay in business.

The first issue of Essence featured a cover showing a beautiful, sensually full-featured black woman crowned by a glistening Afro emerging from shadow into the light of a new day. The cover date was May 1970, the newsstand price was 60 cents, the subscription rate was $5.00 for a year, $9.00 for two years, and the magazine had 82 pages, 13 of them advertising.

I have always been very clear that I sold Essence to Time Warner with the expectation that the magazine would continue to exercise its power to galvanize black women--to inform, affirm, and empower them.

Don't rule your husband. But arrange the conditions in which he will make his choices.

It was evident that Madame Restell not only liked to do as she pleased, but to talk about it as well.

Observe Everything. Always think for yourself. Never let other people make important decisions for you.

As Anne watched her, she could not help thinking of the age-old question every woman asks herself at some time or other: do I have to swallow it?

One thing I do know is that my helpers were qualified by the wisdom of the Holy Spirit.

Shame can be removed, and you can still be you. Despite your feeling that your destiny and shame's destiny are identical—that if shame no longer exists, you won't either—the reality is that you will be more you without shame.

It is perhaps the great discomfort of those trying to silence the world to discover that we have voices sealed inside our heads, voices that with each passing day, grow even louder than the clamor of the world outside.

You thought that if you didn't tell the stories, the sky would fall on your head.

There is a Haitian saying that might upset the aesthetic sensibilities of some women. 'Nou led, nou la,' it says. 'We are ugly, but we are here.' Like the modesty that is common in rural Haitian culture, this saying makes a deeper claim for poor Haitian women than maintaining beauty, be it skin-deep or otherwise. For women like my grandmother, what is worth celebrating is the fact that we are here, that against all odds, we exist.

You are not a tragedy, you are a personal essay. You must rise above and you must do it in the last paragraph with basic grammar and easily recognized words.

What if my becoming fully aware of the frequency of such moments makes me terrified to leave my house?

When that day of jubilee finally arrives, all of us will be there with you, walking, heads held high, crowns a-glitter, because we do have a right to be here.

God grant us the courage to change those things we can, the serenity to accept the things we can't, and the wisdom to know the difference.