Category: confidence
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Women and decisions
“No woman should be told she can’t make her own decisions about her body,” Kamala Harris says.
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Tell them who you are
In her autobiography The Truths We Hold, Kamala Harris stresses that one of her mother’s favorite sayings was: “Don’t let anybody tell you who you are. You tell them who you are.”
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Ambitious girls
Aren’t girls supposed to be ambitious? Persistent? Assertive? And, confident? I watched an award-winning documentary—”The ABCs of Book Banning”—and I discovered that a children’s book by Meena Harris titled Ambitious Girls is one of the books that has been banned. Here are some words from the book: Persistent means I won’t give up. Assertive means…
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The story of a Black woman
Eddie Bernice Johnson, who served in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1993 to 2023, overcame many of the obstacles faced by Black women.
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Independent thinker?
No many of us are independent thinkers, concludes Bret Stephens in The New York Times. “There are very few people who don’t see themselves as independent thinkers. There are even fewer people who are. Most people just want to belong, and the most essential elements of belonging are agreeing and conforming.”
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Try sitting and thinking
It’s okay to do nothing. That’s why I love this quote from playwright Lorraine Hansberry. “Never be afraid to sit awhile and think.”
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Moral courage
“Moral cowardice is something which I think I never had,” Abraham Lincoln once said. Lincoln had moral courage. I found this quote in Jon Meacham’s book And There Was Light—Abraham Lincoln and the American Struggle. Lincoln’s story has meaning for us today. –Joy
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Solid ground
Qian Julie Wang, author of Beautiful Country, came to the United States in 1994 when she was seven years old. She often went to school hungry and was put in special education classes because she didn’t speak English. Eventually, she graduated from Yale Law School. Her mother was a professor who taught math and computer…
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Defining your worth
“I do know one thing about me: I don’t measure myself by others’ expectations or let others define my worth,” says Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor.
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No need to apologize
Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor says that she has no need to apologize. The “look-wider, search-more affirmative action” that Princeton and Yale practiced opened doors for her. “That was its purpose,” she explains, “to create the conditions whereby students from disadvantaged backgrounds could be brought to the starting line of a race many were unaware…