“Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great.”
“I have been struck again and again by how important measuring is to improving the human condition.”
“Our business in life is not to get ahead of others, but to get ahead of ourselves — to break our own records, to outstrip our yesterday by our today.”
“People are often unreasonable, illogical and self-centred: Forgive them anyway. If you are kind, people may accuse you of selfish, ulterior motives: Be kind anyway. If you are successful, you will win some false friends and some true enemies: Succeed anyway. If you are honest and frank, people may cheat you. Be honest and frank anyway. If you find serenity and happiness, they may be jealous: Be happy anyway. The good you do today, people will often forget tomorrow: Do good anyway. Give the world the best you have, and it may never be enough: Give the world the best you’ve got anyway. You see, in the final analysis, it is between you and God: It was never between you and them anyway.”
“To positively discriminate in favour of groups that have been negatively discriminated against in the past.”
“Caring about someone as much as you care about yourself, and the critical eye that comes with it, are two strands that cannot be separated. Both engender a passion that makes the mother-daughter relationship perilous—and precious.”
“I cannot condone the systematic destruction of the hope and spirit of people who have suffered hardship and pain to reach our shores. They are people who believe that they have been or are at risk of being persecuted in their own country.”
“A snail could crawl the entire length of the Great Wall of China in 212 years, just slightly longer than the 200 years it will take for women to be equally represented in Parliament.”
“Sometimes the poorest woman leaves her children the richest inheritance.”
“Worry does not empty tomorrow of its sorrow; it empties today of its strength.”
