Nuggets of Wisdom

Sapere aude -- "Have the courage to use your own understanding." " Dare to be wise." motto of the Enlightenment

"I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in the stride toward freedom is not the White citizens' 'Councilor' or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate who is more devoted to 'order' than justice who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice." Dr. Martin Luther King Jr "Letter from Birmingham Jail" 1963

"Never give up on a dream just because of the time it will take to accomplish it. The time will pass anyway." Earl Nightingale

"So long as you write what you wish to write, that is all that matters; and whether it matters for ages or only for hours, nobody can say." Virginia Woolf

"One life is all we have and we live it as we believe in living it. But to sacrifice what you are and to live without belief, that is a fate more terrible than dying." Joan of Arc

"The young women of today, free to study, to speak, to write, to choose their occupation, should remember that every inch of this freedom was bought for them at a great price. It is for them to show their gratitude by helping onward the reforms of their own times, by spreading the light of freedom and of truth still wider. The debt that each generation owes to the past it must pay to the future” Abigail Scott Duniway, suffragist 1834-1915

“Every great dream begins with a dreamer. Always remember, you have within you the strength, the patience, and the passion to reach for the stars to change the world." Harriet Tubman

”Life is a hard battle anyway. If we laugh and sing a little as we fight the good fight of freedom, it makes it all go easier. I will not allow my life’s light be determined by the darkness around me.” Soujourner Truth

"The best protection a woman can have…is courage." Elizabeth Cady Stanton

"It was we, the people, not we, the white male citizens; nor yet we, the male citizens; but we, the whole people, who formed the Union…Men, their rights and nothing more; women, their rights and nothing less."Susan B. Anthony

“While most girls run away from home to marry, I ran away to teach.” Mary Church Terrell

“I know nothing of man’s rights, or woman’s rights; human rights are all that I recognize.” Sarah Moore Grimke

“There will never be a new world order until women are a part of it.” Alice Paul

"People say, what is the sense of our small effort? They cannot see that we must lay one brick at a time. A pebble cast into a pond causes ripples that spread in all directions. Each one of thoughts, words, and deeds is like that. No one has a right to sit down and feel hopeless. There is too much work to do." Dorothy Day

“Any great change must expect opposition, because it shakes the very foundation of privilege.” Lucretia Mott

“I never doubted that equal rights was the right direction. Most reforms, most problems are complicated. But to me there is nothing complicated about ordinary equality.” Alice Paul

“Woman is learning for herself that not self-sacrifice, but self-development, is her first duty in life; and this, not primarily for the sake of others but that she may become fully herself.” Matilda Joslyn Gage

“There shall never be another season of silence until women have the same rights men have on this green earth.” Susan B. Anthony

“Women suffrage is going to prevail…it is not merely because women are discontented. It is because the women have seen visions of duty, and that is something which we not only cannot resist, but if we be true Americans, we do not resist. I come here to fight with you…and to congratulate you that there is a force behind you that will beyond any peradventure be triumphant." President Woodrow Wilson

"We have made partners of the women in this war (World War I)…Shall we admit them only to a partnership of suffering and sacrifice and toil and not a partnership of privilege and right?” President Woodrow Wilson

“I deem it one of the greatest honors of my life that this great event, so stoutly fought for, for so many years, should have occurred during this period of my administration.” President Woodrow Wilson

You have a goal. You know where you are going. The goal has its importance. But the doing is what is truly fulfilling. Every enthusiastic person has a goal that may be important, but the doing is intensely fulfilling, and it is the essence of enthusiasm. ~ Eckhart Tolle

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"Those times when you get up early and you work hard, those times when you stay up late and you work hard, those times when you don't feel like working, you're too tired, you don't want to push yourself, but you do it anyway. That is actually the dream. That's the dream. It's not the destination, it's the journey. And if you guys can understand that, then what you'll see happen is you won't accomplish your dreams, your dreams won't come true; something greater will." Kobe Bryant 1917 retirement speech

"It is easier to live through someone else than to complete yourself. The freedom to lead and plan your own life is frightening if you have never faced it before. It is frightening when a woman finally realizes that there is no answer to the question 'who am I' except the voice inside herself." Betty Friedan

"I was going to die, sooner or later, whether or not I had even spoken myself. My silences had not protected me. Your silences will not protect you....What are the words you do not yet have? What are the tyrannies you swallow day by day and attempt to make your own, until you will sicken and die of them, still in silence? We have been socialized to respect fear more than our own need for language."

I began to ask each time: "What's the worst that could happen to me if I tell this truth?" Unlike women in other countries, our breaking silence is unlikely to have us jailed, "disappeared" or run off the road at night. Our speaking out will irritate some people, get us called bitchy or hypersensitive and disrupt some dinner parties. And then our speaking out will permit other women to speak, until laws are changed and lives are saved and the world is altered forever.

Next time, ask: What's the worst that will happen? Then push yourself a little further than you dare. Once you start to speak, people will yell at you. They will interrrupt you, put you down and suggest it's personal. And the world won't end.

And the speaking will get easier and easier. And you will find you have fallen in love with your own vision, which you may never have realized you had. And you will lose some friends and lovers, and realize you don't miss them. And new ones will find you and cherish you. And you will still flirt and paint your nails, dress up and party, because, as I think Emma Goldman said, "If I can't dance, I don't want to be part of your revolution." And at last you'll know with surpassing certainty that only one thing is more frighten speaking your truth. And that is not speaking." Audre Lorde