I, with a deeper instinct, choose a man who compels my strength, who makes enormous demands on me, who does not doubt my courage or my toughness, who does not believe me naïve or innocent, who has the courage to treat me like a woman.

We need to reshape our own perception of how we view ourselves. We have to step up as women and take the lead.

I was raised to believe that excellence is the best deterrent to racism or sexism. And that’s how I operate my life.

I’m tough, I’m ambitious, and I know exactly what I want. If that makes me a bitch, okay.

When a man gives his opinion, he’s a man. When a woman gives her opinion, she’s a bitch.

So here is the quick way of working out if you’re a feminist. Put your hand in your pants. a) Do you have a vagina? and b) Do you want to be in charge of it? If you said “yes” to both, then congratulations! You’re a feminist.

I suppose I could have stayed home and baked cookies and had teas, but what I decided to do, was to fulfil my profession, which I entered before my husband was in public life.

Always be a first-rate version of yourself, instead of a second-rate version of somebody else.

If you want something said, ask a man; if you want something done, ask a woman.

Don’t compromise yourself. You are all you’ve got. There is no yesterday, no tomorrow, it’s all the same day.

I’m a feminist because I believe in women… It’s a heavy word, feminism, but it’s not one I think we should run from. I’m proud to be a feminist.

The most courageous act is still to think for yourself. Aloud.

Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away.

The thing women have yet to learn is nobody gives you power. You just take it.

Women have to harness their power – it’s absolutely true. It’s just learning not to take the first no. And if you can’t go straight ahead, you go around the corner.

If you think you’re too small to have an impact, try going to bed with a mosquito.

Instead of looking at the past, I put myself ahead twenty years and try to look at what I need to do now in order to get there then.

I could not, at any age, be content to take my place by the fireside and simply look on. Life was meant to be lived. Curiosity must be kept alive. One must never, for whatever reason, turn his back on life.

A woman is like a tea bag – you never know how strong she is until she gets in hot water.

I am the American Dream. I am the epitome of what the American Dream basically said. It said, you could come from anywhere and be anything you want in this country. That’s exactly what I’ve done. I am where I am, because I believe in all possibilities.

If you obey all the rules, you miss all the fun.

Never dull your shine for somebody else.

The question isn’t who’s going to let me; it’s who is going to stop me.

Just don’t give up trying to do what you really want to do. Where there is love and inspiration, I don’t think you can go wrong.

Life is not easy for any of us. But what of that? We must have perseverance and above all confidence in ourselves. We must believe that we are gifted for something and that this thing must be attained.

I myself have never been able to find out precisely what a feminist is. I only know that people call me a feminist whenever I express sentiments that differentiate me from a doormat.

I am an example of what is possible when girls from the very beginning of their lives are loved and nurtured by people around them. I was surrounded by extraordinary women in my life, who taught me about quiet, strength and dignity.

I've always had a great work ethic, even when I was washing dishes.

It's fool's gold if you are winning games and are not playing the right way.

I haven't slept for ten days, because that would be too long.

I am doing my best to find it. I will find it before the public finds it. I will get out of it before it's too late. The reason I will do that is because that's what I'm paid to do.

I don't necessarily wait for that massive leading role. I want to keep the juices flowing.

If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more, and become more, you are a leader.

I don't know, I'd love to try some theater. That's my other thing. I'd love to do some Shakespeare.

Government is connected to everything we do.

Every employee in a company depends on the C.E.O. to make fast, high-quality decisions.

Some of us are becoming the men we wanted to marry.

These days, I'm always trying to have lots of touches, to be involved, and to play my football for 90 minutes.

The irony is that we're really good at comedy in Britain, but for some reason, we make very few comedy films. And when we do, they're either quite American in style, or very Richard Curtis. And I like Richard Curtis, but I think only Richard Curtis should write Richard Curtis films, and other people should try and find their own style.

It's your glove, your baseball glove. It's got a soul, a memory all its own, and a future that never fades because it has never let go of the grasp the past has on you and so many others.

I think music is a lifting force, I think love is the lifting force in the human condition. I think you see someone loving on their child, and it moves you, and you can't help it. It rings a bell inside of us that elevates us as human beings, and I treasure that. I think it's one of the few great things about human beings.

I don't think anyone disagrees that male and female brains work differently.

What we have done with No Child Left Behind is squeeze the creativity out of the classroom because teachers have begun to just teaching to the test.

Advertising isn't just the disruption of aesthetics, the insults to your intelligence and the interruption of your train of thought. At every company that sells ads, a significant portion of their engineering team spends their day tuning data mining, writing better code to collect all your personal data.

There was no television, so the radio provided you with everything.

I think racial profiling is wrong. It cannot be defended. It's just flat wrong. And if a matter came before me, and it could be established that the arrest was made strictly on racial profiling, when I was on the bench, it would be gone.

I have a fearless but neutral personality.

You can relate to somebody's pain and you have compassion, which can lead to intimacy.

My writing process often begins with a question. I write down ideas and let them stew for about a year. Then, when I sit down to write, I make a list of characters and try to see how they fit.