Featured Quotes


Last revision date: November 2, 2009

2009

  • November/December: “The history of all times, and of today especially, teaches that…women will be forgotten if they forget to think about themselves.” – Louise Otto, German feminist, 1849
  • September/October: “Enslave the liberty of but one human being and the liberties of the world are put in peril.” – William Lloyd Garrison
  • July/August: “The education and empowerment of women throughout the world cannot fail to result in the more caring, tolerant, just and peaceful life for all.” -Aung San Suu Kyi, Nobel Peace Prize Laureate
  • May/June: “Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much.” – Helen Keller and “The global financial crisis is forcing all of us to save and cut costs where we can. But our work for the women of the world must continue undiminished…. When you empower a woman, you empower a family….when you empower a woman, you change the world.” – UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon
  • March/April: “How can one not speak about war, poverty, and inequality when people who suffer from these afflictions don’t have a voice to speak?” – Isabel Allende
  • January/February: “We make a living by what we get. We make a life by what we give.” – Sir Winston Churchill and “How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world.” – Anne Frank

2008

  • November/December: “Many persons have the wrong idea of what constitutes true happiness. It s not attained through self-gratification but through Fidelity to a worthy purpose.” – Helen Keller
  • September/October: “You must be the change you want to see in the world.” – Mahatma Gandhi
  • July/August: “Guard well within yourself that treasure, kindness. Know how to give without hesitation, how to lose without regret, how to acquire without meanness.” – George Sand, French author (1804-1876)
  • May/June: “Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.” – Philo
  • March/April: “If you wish success in life, make perserverance your bosom friend, experience your wise counselor, caution your elder brother and hope your guardian genius.” – Joseph Addison, English essayist, poet, & politician (1672-1719)
  • January/February: “Let us read and let us dance – two amusements that will never do any harm to the world.” – Voltaire

2007

  • November/December: “Obstacles are those frightful things you see when you take your eyes off the goal.” – Henry Ford
  • September/October: “There never will be complete equality until women themselves help to make laws and elect lawmakers.” – Susan B. Anthony
  • July/August: “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” – Martin Luther King, Jr.
  • April: “No act of kindness, no matter how small, is ever wasted.”-Aesop, The Lion and the Mouse
  • March: “My wish isn’t to mean everything to everyone, but something to someone.” – Javan, Iranian born American inventor
  • February: “A kiss is a lovely trick designed by nature to stop speech when words become superfluous.” – Ingrid Bergman
  • January: “Far away there in the sunshine are my highest aspirations. I may not reach them, but I can look up and see their beauty, believe in them, and try to follow where they lead.” – Louisa May Alcott

2006

  • December: “All adventures, especially into new territory, are scary.” – Sally Ride
  • November: “Women are the real architects of society.” – Harriet Beecher Stowe
  • October: “Nobody sees a flower – really – it is so small it takes time – we haven’t time – and to see takes time, like to have a friend takes time.” – Georgia O’Keeffe (1887 – 1986)
  • September: “Do the best you can in every task, no matter how unimportant it may seem at the time. No one learns more about a problem than the person at the bottom.” – Sandra Day O’Connor
  • August: “There shall be eternal summer in the grateful heart.” – Celia Thaxter and
    “In summer, the song sings itself.” – William Carlos Williams
  • July: “I never see what has been done; I only see what remains to be done.” – Marie Curie
  • June: “If you have knowledge, let others light their candles in it.” – Margaret Fuller
  • May: “Experience is never limited, and it is never complete; it is an immense sensibility, a kind of huge spider-web of the finest silken threads suspended in the chamber of consciousness, and catching every air-borne particle in its tissue.” – Henry James, 1843-1916
  • April: “Why does a slight tax increase cost you two hundred dollars and a substantial tax cut save you thirty cents?” – Peg Bracken and “Giving frees us from the familiar territory of our own needs by opening our mind to the unexplained worlds occupied by the needs of others.” –
    Barbara Bush
  • March: “Caring can be learned by all human beings, can be worked into the design of every life, meeting an individual need as well as a pervasive need in society.” and “Sharing is sometimes more demanding than giving.” – Mary Catherine Bateson
  • February: “Nobody can make you feel inferior without your permission.”-Eleanor Roosevelt
    and Valentine Quotesheart
  • January: “The glass ceiling gets more pliable when you turn up the heat.” – politician Pauline Kezer

2005

  • December: “Complacency is a far more dangerous attitude than outrage.” – Naomi Littlebear Morena
  • November: “Tell me and I forget. Show me and I remember. Involve me and I understand.” – Chinese proverb
  • October: “Opportunities are usually disguised by hard work, so most people don’t recognize them.” – Ann Landers
  • September: “The glass ceiling gets more pliable when you turn up the heat.” – politician Pauline Kezer
  • August: “It’s never too late for a happy childhood.” – Gloria Steinem
  • July: “I have been at war from the beginning. I’ve never looked back before. I’ve never had the time and it has always seemed so dangerous. To look back is to relax one’s vigil.” – actress Bette Davis
  • June: “Nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood.” – Marie Curie
  • May: “Risk! Risk anything! Care no more for the opinion of others, for those voices. Do the hardest thing on earth for you. Act for yourself. Face the truth.” – writer Katherine Mansfield
  • April: “There is more in us than we know. If we can be made to see it, perhaps, for the rest of our lives we will be unwilling to settle for less.” – Kurt Hahn, Founder of Outward Bound
  • March: “It doesn’t pay well to fight for what we believe in.” – writer Lillian Hellman
  • February: “Remember always that you have not only the right to be an individual, you have the obligation to be one. You cannot make any useful contributions in life unless you do that.” – humanitarian Eleanor Roosevelt
  • January: “I am only one, but still I am one. I cannot do everything, but still I can do something. I will not refuse to do the something I can do.” – Hellen Keller (from the RFB&D Bookmark)

2004

  • December: “You have to accept whatever comes and the only important thing is that you meet it with courage and with the best you have to give.” and “Courage is more exhilarating than fear, and in the long run it is easier.” – Eleanor Roosevelt, humanitarian.
  • November: “Somewhere out in this audience may even be someone who will one day follow my footsteps, and preside over the White House as the president’s spouse. I wish him well!” – Barbara Bush
  • October: “Every effort must be made in childhood to teach the young to use their own minds. For one thing is sure: If they don’t make up their own minds, someone will do it for them.” – humanitarian Eleanor Roosevelt
  • September: “Nobody can argue any longer about the rights of women. It’s like arguing about the rights of earthquakes.” – Lillian Hellman, writer.
  • August: “There are two kinds of people, those who do the work and those who take the credit. Try to be the first group; there is less competition there.” – Indira Gandhi
  • July: “Courage is the ladder on which all other virtues mount.” – Clare Booth Luce
  • June: “You ask me why I do not write something…. I think one’s feelings waste themselves in words, they ought all to be distilled into actions and into actions which bring results.” – Florence Nightingale (1820-1910)
  • May: “We cannot hold a torch to light another’s path without brightening our own.” – Ben Sweetland
  • April: “While we have the gift of life, it seems to me the only tragedy is to allow part of us to die — whether it is our spirit, our creativity or our glorious uniqueness.” – Gilda Radner (1946-1989)
  • March: “Women are the real architects of society.” – Harriet Beecher Stowe
  • February: “Far away there in the sunshine are my highest aspirations. I may not reach them, but I can look up and see their beauty, believe in them, and try to follow where they lead.” – Louisa May Alcott
  • January: “Many persons have a wrong idea of what constitutes true happiness. It is not attained through self-gratification but through fidelity to a worthy purpose.” – Helen Keller

2003

  • December: “The main dangers in this life are the people who want to change everything… or nothing.” – Nancy Aster
  • November: “Our lives are not in the lap of the gods, but in the lap of our cooks.” – Lin Yutang, The Importance of Living, 1937
  • October: “We are not what we know but what we are willing to learn.” – Mary Catherine Bateson
  • September: “As one goes through life one learns that if you don’t paddle your own canoe, you don’t move.” – Katharine Hepburn
  • August: “Men, their rights, and nothing more; women, their rights, and nothing less.” – Susan B. Anthony
  • July: “Some leaders are born women.” – Anonymous and “A woman is the full circle. Within her is the power to create, nurture, and transform.” – Diane Mariechild
  • June: “As a woman I have no country. As a woman my country is the whole world.” – Virginia Woolf
  • May: “Leadership is the art of getting someone else to do something you want done because he wants to do it.” – Dwight Eisenhower
  • April: “I’d rather be a ‘could be’ if I cannot be an ‘are,’ because a could-be is a maybe who is reaching for a star. I’d rather be a has-been than a ‘might-have-been,’ by far; for a might-have-been has never been, but a ‘has’ was once an are.” – Milton Berle
  • March: “The quiet that envelops space makes the beauty even more powerful. And I only hope that the quiet can one day spread to my country.” -Ilan Ramon, Israel’s first astronaut who died on the Columbia
  • February: “After the verb ‘to love’, the verb ‘to help’ is the most beautiful verb in the world.” – Bertha von Suttner
  • January: “We realize that what we are accomplishing is a drop in the ocean. But if this drop were not in the ocean, it would be missed.” – Mother Teresa

2002

  • December: “You’re in charge but don’t touch the controls.” – Shannon Lucid, record setting American astronaut, recounting what the two Russian cosmonauts tell her each time they leave the Mir space station for a spacewalk, 1996.
  • November: “In politics if you want anything said, ask a man. If you want anything done, ask a woman.” – Margaret Thatcher
  • October: “Remember, Ginger Rogers did everything Fred Astaire did, but she did it backwards and in high heels.” – Faith Whittlesey
  • September: “You may be disappointed if you fail, but you are doomed if you don’t try.” – Beverly Sills
  • August: “You must be the change you wish to see in the world.” – Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi and “Hard work spotlights the character of people: some turn up their sleeves, some turn up their noses, and some don’t turn up at all.” – Sam Ewig
  • July: “You must do the things you think you cannot do.” – Eleanor Roosevelt
  • June: “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.” – Ella Fitzgerald
  • May: “Adventure is worthwhile in itself.” – Amelia Earhart
  • April: “You don’t always win your battles, but it’s good to know you fought.” – Lauren Bacall
  • March: “The people I’m furious with are the women’s liberationists. They keep getting up on soapboxes and proclaiming that women are brighter than men. It’s true, but it should be kept quiet or it ruins the whole racket.” – Anita Loos
  • February: “That’s what it takes to be a hero, a little gem of innocence inside you that makes you want to believe that there still exists a right and wrong, that decency will somehow triumph in the end.” – Lise Hand, describing the late Irish journalist Veronica Guerin
  • January: “All adventures, especially into new territory, are scary.” – Sally Ride

2001

  • December: “The fragrance always stays in the hand that gives the rose.” – Hada Bejar
  • November: “Education: That which reveals to the wise, and conceals from the stupid, the vast limits of their knowledge.” – Mark Twain
  • October: “Women have got to make the world safe for men since men have made it so darned unsafe for women.” – Lady Nancy Astor
  • September: “How can one not speak about war, poverty, and inequality when people who suffer from these afflictions don’t have a voice to speak?” – Isabel Allende
  • August: “Never doubt that a small, group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.” – Margaret Mead
  • July: “Do the right thing. It will gratify some people and astonish the rest.” – Mark Twain [Samuel Langhornne Clemens] (1835-1910)
  • June: “Kindness is the language which the deaf can hear and the blind can see.” – Mark Twain
  • May: “Courage is the price that Life exacts for granting peace.” – Amelia Earhart (1898-1937)