Cecile Richards Quotes

Don't sit around and wait for the perfect opportunity to come along —find something and make it an opportunity.

If you’re not scaring yourself, you’re probably not doing enough.

She was warned. She was given an explanation. Nevertheless, #ShePersisted." The history of progress for women, summed up in 11 words.

Sometimes being a troublemaker can be pretty damn awesome. After all, it was one of the great troublemakers of all time, Emma Goldman, who said, “If I can’t dance, I don’t want to be part of your revolution.

Feminist is not a passive label; it means speaking out and standing up for women everywhere, and also for yourself. One woman calling out an injustice is powerful enough; when we raise our voices together, we can shake the status quo to its foundation.

You can't revisit a place where you were happy, as you can't re-love someone you've loved and left" ~from "Package Tour

Once you start questioning authority, it’s hard to stop.

The Low Road,” by Marge Piercy. Part of it goes like this: It starts when you care to act, it starts when you do it again after they said no, it starts when you say We and know who you mean, and each day you mean one more.

With his face all scrunched up and twisted with anger, he looked just like Draco Malfoy in Harry Potter. Sometimes when someone is making an idiot of themselves, especially on live television, it’s just better to let them go ahead.

Walking into the hearing room, I checked my phone one last time. I had an incoming text from my friend Terry McGovern, who works in global and maternal health. Her message read, “Just remember to carry the rage of women through the centuries with you this morning!

This is your life. It is the only one you get, so no excuses and no do-overs. If you make a mistake or fail at something, you learn from it, you get over it, and you move on. Your job is to be the very best person you can be, and to never settle for anything less.

Here’s the headline: In the first year alone, women saved $ 1.4 billion on birth control pills. Today we’re at a thirty-year low for unintended pregnancy, a historic low in teen pregnancy, and the lowest abortion rate since Roe v. Wade. These facts are too often overlooked, even though this is one of the biggest public health success stories of the last century. It didn’t happen on its own—it happened in large part due to better and more affordable access to birth control.

We are urgent about the body; He is about the soul. We call for present comforts; He considers our everlasting rest. And therefore when He sends not the very things we ask, He hears us by sending greater than we can ask or think.   - Richard Cecil

It is much easier to settle a point than to act on it.

If there is any person to whom you feel a dislike, that is the person of whom you ought never to speak.

Darcy waited patiently for his cousin. He could not understand what could be taking him so long. He was ready, the carriage was ready, but Richard was not. “What could be keeping him?” Darcy thought.

What if I am wrong about her and Richard?

James Edward Garcia spent 3 nights in the hotel after Elisa’s death, bringing with him an EVP recorder. He believes the spirit of Elisa came through to him, while in his hotel bedroom. He asks, “Who killed you?” A voice replies, on the EVP recording, “They did.” In the elevator, the same one Elisa was last seen in, he captures a voice saying; “You better keep out! Keep out!” He says, “The creepy whispering voices sound p…d. They are either warning me – or threatening me.” Down in the lobby, a whispered female voice says, “James” several times. Back in his room, his recording equipment picks up what seems to be many voices; a cacophony of them. A female voice comes through, “Save me, please save me!” A man’s voice says, “She died.” A male voice says, “Yeah, blood.” “Killing” the voice says. The female voice returns, “Please save me,” to which James shouts, “Who are you?” A very deep voice replies, “They killed her,” followed by a higher pitch voice saying, “A demon seed.” One night he also slept in the room serial killer Richard Ramirez called his home while on his killing spree. ‘I returned to the room only to find the TV Remote on the floor with the battery cover off and a Tylenol bottle on its side on the table between the beds. I thought that Hotel Security must have been rummaging through my room. I setup a static camera to film my night. I was not aware that my Night Shot Infrared camera picked up a skull face that had bled through the paint on the wall behind me. You can clearly see it and it is pretty scary. At one point my face seems to have morphed into some type of demon possessed creature while I was asleep. It sounds outrageous but watch the footage and you will see what I’m talking about.” Is the Cecil Hotel imbued with demons who play with those who stay there; who get inside their heads? Newsblaze reporter John Kays asks, ‘Isn’t it logical to postulate that whoever killed Elisa Lam (if that’s what happened) was in the throes of the same evil spirit that Jack Unterweger was possessed with?’ Or the spirit of serial killer Richard Ramirez? He is referring to the two serial killers who called this hotel their home. Perhaps Elisa’s death had been part of a serial killer’s quest; but it could just as easily have been a crime of opportunism, by a random, solitary and as yet uncaptured killer; indeed, an un-sought-after-killer too at this

Sally Reed, having lost her only child, sought to take charge of her son’s few belongings. She applied to the probate court to be appointed administrator of Richard’s death estate. The boy’s father, Cecil Reed, later applied for the same appointment

I don't know what my future holds, but I do know I've been fortunate enough to be a troublemaker my whole life.

Focus on the people who are counting on you, not the ones who are trying to drag you down. The

Edna St. Vincent Millay, who said, “It’s not true that life is one damn thing after another; it’s one damn thing over and over.

We saw a 900 percent increase in requests for appointments to get IUDs, a form of birth control that lasts for several years; women wanted to make sure their birth control would outlast the Trump administration.

Just don’t forget: to make a difference, you have to make a little trouble.

Sometimes, when someone is making an idiot of themselves, especially on live television, it’s just better to let them go ahead. I

I will say this about the young boy in the tiny white coffin. Despite the doctor’s dire predictions, the boy was too tough, resolute, and courageous to let something as small as a deadly disease defeat him. No, the boy was made of stronger stuff than that and it took much more to defeat him. It took a three-ton municipal bus moving at forty miles per hour and driven by one Cecil Richard Anderson to defeat this boy.” I heard the deepest of sobs and looked down to see a man wearing some sort of bus driver’s uniform being held up by two women.

You don’t have to be a professional troublemaker to take a stand...

The day Speaker of the House Paul Ryan announced that he was going to do everything he could to repeal the Affordable Care Act and defund Planned Parenthood, [...] we saw a 900% increase in requests for appointments to get IUDs, a form of birth control that lasts for several years. Women wanted to make sure their birth control would outlast the [new] Administration.

the average woman in America who wants kids spends five years pregnant or trying to conceive, and thirty years trying not to.

In the first year alone, women saved $1.4 billion on birth control pills. Today we’re at a thirty-year low for unintended pregnancy, a historic low in teen pregnancy, and the lowest abortion rate since Roe v. Wade.

There is a takeaway here for aspiring hell-raisers: We get only what we’re willing to fight for—nothing more and, I hope, nothing less.

Susan Stamberg from NPR, with her wonderfully curly hair and an enormous grin, walked up to Mom carrying her ubiquitous microphone. “How does this feel, Ann?” she shouted above the screaming delegates. Mom was not a sentimental person; life hadn’t afforded her that luxury. But at that moment she was overcome, teary-eyed, as Ferraro’s name was announced over the speakers. “I wasn’t sure I would ever live to see this day,” she said. “Finally, one of us.

Women aren’t usually in it for the glory; they’re in it to get something done.

master the organizing rules of the road: Always have a room that’s half the size you need, with half the chairs you need, so you can guarantee meetings will be standing room only.

Raising money isn’t only about getting an influx of cash; it’s about being able to prove that other people support the idea you’re working on. It’s about building a following.

Of course, getting people in a room is 20 percent of the work; the other 80 percent is having something meaningful for them to do after they walk out the door.

Provide name tags and food; start on time and end on time; have a next step; have fun. Remember, “If I can’t dance, I don’t want to be part of your revolution.

Along the way I’ve picked up a few tips. Warren Buffett told me he always travels with his own pillow. Good advice. A navy blue suit never shows dirt, even if you get mistaken for a flight attendant every now and then. When someone tells you they’re praying for you, just say a polite “Thank you” and move on. After all, it can’t hurt, right? Calling home every night, no matter where you are or how late it is, helps. Even when Kirk is already asleep and I just get his voice mail I feel better. Try to know where the best ice cream is in any given airport terminal. A portable clothes steamer can be a lifesaver, since you can use it anywhere and don’t need an ironing board. (Believe me, it works—even in a public bathroom an hour before an event.) Sleep whenever you can, even if it’s for fifteen minutes on a flight. And never shy away from telling people what you do. You dispel myths, for others and yourself.

At every job, look for someone who can teach you something. Stay close to the ground, and remember that you’re never too big of a deal to knock on doors. Find something outside your job that brings you joy—don’t look up years later and realize you missed out on the things you love. Give your staff vacation days, play sports, travel. Doing this will make you a better person and a better organizer. Know that there’s no road map for social change—so keep making it up, don’t get stuck or tied down, and never turn down a new opportunity. And never ever hold yourself back from accepting a big job or a big chance.

Whatever your fight, don’t be ladylike!

You may go somewhere else and you may make a lot of money,” she said, “but you will never receive the kind of gratification that you receive from looking someone in the eye who says, ‘Thank you for helping make my life better.

Don’t wait for all the boats to get in the flotilla—just start moving. You may lose a few people, and others may join up along the way, but if you wait until everyone is 100 percent on board, you’ll never get going. At a certain point you have to quit talking about it and start doing it.

And no matter what you do, never forget the basics: Provide name tags and food; start on time and end on time; have a next step; have fun. Remember, “If I can’t dance, I don’t want to be part of your revolution.

Children learn not from what you tell them, but from what they see you do, how you spend your days and what you do with your life.

It shouldn’t be up to women to dismantle the patriarchy, but we can’t sit around and hope someone else does it either. Feminist is not a passive label; it means speaking out and standing up for women everywhere, and also for yourself. One woman calling out an injustice is powerful enough; when we raise our voices together, we can shake the status quo to its foundation.

Often the work that’s most worthwhile seems the most intractable and impossible. But just because someone else hasn’t figured it out yet doesn’t mean you can’t. After all, if it was easy, someone else would be doing it. And in the meantime, at least I’m enjoying fighting the good fight.

This is a once-in-a-lifetime moment to decide who we are—as individuals and as a country. Unless we want to be defined by a stream of divisive late-night tweets (not to name any names), we’re all going to have to be brave.

The truth is, anything worth doing has its challenges. And, yes, fighting for what you believe in can be discouraging, defeating, and sometimes downright depressing. But it can also be powerful, inspiring, fun, and funny—and it can introduce you to people who will change your life.

This is it—your only life—so whatever the question, the answer is yes. Don’t look back. Don’t hesitate.

Focus on the people who are counting on you, not the ones who are trying to drag you down.

Don’t sit around and wait for the perfect opportunity to come along—find something and make it an opportunity.

Back when Mom was starting to get into politics, she often reminded me, “People don’t do things for your reasons—they do things for their reasons.

I learned a very tough lesson that my dad had admonished me about before: Never go out on strike unless you have a plan to get back in.

politics at its best is about a lot more than expensive TV ads and polling. It is a contest of wills between folks who are satisfied with how things are and those who are passionate about what could be better.

My mother said often, “Life isn’t fair, but government should be.

Shakespeare’s pen was dipped in courtly scandals and his audience titteringly aware of who it was being pulled apart onstage. Nobody was safe from his satirical barbs, not Elizabeth’s hunchbacked secretary of state Robert Cecil, whose deformities were likely parodied in Richard III; not the powerful Lord Burghley, ruthlessly mocked in Hamlet as the Alzheimered Polonius; and not even the queen herself, who once snappishly complained of having been roasted in Richard II.

On February 7, 1601, about two years before the queen’s death, an uprising against the crown had begun at the Globe Theatre with a treasonous production of Richard II in which Elizabeth was satirized as the incompetent Richard surrounded by villainous counselors. This rebellion, which would march on London the following morning, was led by two fallen favorites, Robert Devereux, the 2nd Earl of Essex, and Henry Wriothesley, the 3rd Earl of Southampton. We can’t be sure of their motive in starting this doomed rebellion, but it seems likely these two hyper-educated earls, symbols of the fast-fading English Renaissance, had been attempting to free their aged queen from the grasp of her powerful secretary, Sir Robert Cecil, in order to thwart Cecil’s plan to control the crown upon Elizabeth’s death.