Hillary Rodham Clinton Quotes

If I want to knock a story off the front page, I just change my hairstyle.

Every moment wasted looking back, keeps us from moving forward.

In the bible it says you have to forgive seventy times seven. I want you all to know, I'm keeping a chart.

Take criticism seriously, but not personally. If there is truth or merit in the criticism, try to learn from it. Otherwise, let it roll right off you.

Too many women in too many countries speak the same language, of silence...

Every child needs a champion.

Probably my worst quality is that I get very passionate about what I think is right.

It is hard to be a woman. You must think like a man, Act like a lady, Look like a young girl, And work like a horse. —A sign that hangs in my house

when you stumble, keep faith. And when you're knocked down, get right back up and never listen to anyone who says you can't or shouldn't go on.

Don't confuse having a career with having a life.

Fail to plan, plan to fail.

Life is too short to dwell on what might have been.

You can't keep snakes in your backyard and expect them only to bite your neighbors. You know, eventually those snakes are going to turn on whoever has them in the backyard.

Home is a child's first and most important classroom.

I do not wish women to have power over men, but over themselves.

Like it or not, women are always subject to criticism if they show too much feeling in public.

We should remember that just as a positive outlook on life can promote good health, so can everyday acts of kindness.

We need to understand that there is no formula for how women should lead their lives. that is why we must respect the choices that each woman makes for herself and her family. Every woman deserves the chance to realize her God-given potential.

It took a Clinton to clean up after the first Bush, it may take another Clinton to clean up after the second one

Sexism is all the big and little ways that society draws a box around women and says, 'You stay in there.

One thing we know for sure is that change is certain. Progress is not. Progress depends on the choices we make today for tomorrow and on whether we meet our challenges and protect our values.

Human rights are women’s rights, and women’s rights are human rights. Let us not forget that among those rights are the right to speak freely--and the right to be heard.

I'm not going to have some reporters pawing through our papers. We are the president.

I'm sick and tired of people who say that if you debate and disagree with this administration, somehow you're not patriotic. We need to stand up and say we're Americans, and we have the right to debate and disagree with any administration.

In this world and the world of tomorrow, we must go forward together or not at all.

Faith is like stepping off a cliff and expecting one of two outcomes- you will either land on solid ground or you will be taught to fly.

My mistakes burn me up inside. But as one of my favorite poets, Mary Oliver, says, while our mistakes make us want to cry, the world doesn’t need more of that.

That was some weird shit,” George W. reportedly said with characteristic Texas bluntness. I couldn’t have agreed more.

For a candidate, a leader, or anyone, really, the question is not “Are you flawed?” It’s “What do you do about your flaws?” Do you learn from your mistakes so you can do and be better in the future? Or do you reject the hard work of self-improvement and instead tear others down so you can assert they’re as bad or worse than you are?

We are, all of us, exploring a world none of us understands...searching for a more immediate, ecstatic, and penetrating mode of living...for the integrity, the courage to be whole, living in relation to one another in the full poetry of existence. The struggle for an integrated life existing in an atmosphere of communal trust and respect is one with desperately important political and social consequences...Fear is always with us, but we just don't have time for it. -Commencement Speech, Wellesley 1969

One thing I’ve learned over the years is how easy it is for some people to say horrible things about me when I’m not around, but how hard it is for them to look me in the eye and say it to my face.

What did you do with the time and talents i gave you? God's question...

What we have to do... is to find a way to celebrate our diversity and debate our differences without fracturing our communities.

Something I wish every man across America understood is how much fear accompanies women throughout our lives. So many of us have been threatened or harmed. So many of us have helped friends recover from a traumatic incident. It’s difficult to convey what all this violence does to us. It adds up in our hearts and our nervous systems.

It is a violation of human rights when babies are denied food, or drowned, or suffocated, or their spines broken, simply because they are born girls. It is a violation of human rights when women and girls are sold into the slavery of prostitution. It is a violation of human rights when women are doused with gasoline, set on fire and burned to death because their marriage dowries are deemed too small. It is a violation of human rights when individual women are raped in their own communities and when thousands of women are subjected to rape as a tactic or prize of war. It is a violation of human rights when a leading cause of death worldwide among women ages 14 to 44 is the violence they are subjected to in their own homes. It is a violation of human rights when young girls are brutalized by the painful and degrading practice of genital mutilation. It is a violation of human rights when women are denied the right to plan their own families, and that includes being forced to have abortions or being sterilized against their will. If there is one message that echoes forth from this conference, it is that human rights are women's rights - and women's rights are human rights. Let us not forget that among those rights are the right to speak freely - and the right to be heard. [From 'Women's Rights Are Human Rights' Speech Beijing, China: 5 September 1995]

Along the way, I’ve tried not to make the same mistake twice, to learn, to adapt, and to pray for the wisdom to make better choices in the future.

But her emails! —the internet, 2017

They [parents] can resist the impulse to "prove" their love by showering children with things they do not need and give them precisous time and attention instead.

learn to take criticism seriously but not personally.

The Puritan witch hunts may be long over, but something fanatical about unruly women still lurks in our national subconscious.

Although we were not able to shatter that highest and hardest glass ceiling this time, thanks to you it has 18 million cracks in it, and the light is shining through like never before, filling us all with the hope and the sure knowledge that the path will be a little easier next time, and we are going to keep working to make it so, today keep with me and stand for me, we still have so much to do together, we made history, and lets make some more.

My predecessor in the Senate, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, used to say, “Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts.

Ellen Adams was used to people underestimating her. Accomplished middle-aged women were often diminished by small men.

Joan of Arc said a lot of interesting things before they burned her at the stake.

Women have always been the primary victims of war. Women lose their husbands, their fathers, their sons in combat.

Early on the morning of November 9, when it came time to decide on what I’d say in my concession speech, I remembered those words. Inspired by them, I wrote these: “To all the little girls who are watching this, never doubt that you are valuable and powerful and deserving of every chance and opportunity in the world to pursue and achieve your own dreams.

[Belva] Lockwood sought more than suffrage. She urged full political and civil rights for all women. Though she could not vote for president, she twice ran for the office herself, pointing out that nothing in the Constitution barred a woman's candidacy. (She took that bold step 124 years before Hillary Rodham Clinton first became a contender for the Democratic Party's nomination.) Explaining why she entered the race, she wrote in a letter to her future running mate, Marietta Stow: 'We shall never have equal rights until we take them, nor equal respect until we command it.

You didn’t vote? How could you not vote?! You abdicated your responsibility as a citizen at the worst possible time! And now you want me to make you feel better?” Of course, I didn’t say any of that.

Do all the good you can, at all the times you can, to all the people you can, as long as ever you can.

And maybe if I showed that I wasn’t giving up, other people would take heart and keep fighting, too.

First, we parents have to back up school authority and quit making excuses for our kids when they misbehave.

That which does not kill us makes us stronger. —Friedrich Nietzsche (and Kelly Clarkson)

Einstein had said: “I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.

It’s up to us to make the choice to be grateful even when things aren’t going well. Nouwen calls that the “discipline of gratitude.” To me, it means not just being grateful for the good things, because that’s easy, but also to be grateful for the hard things too. To be grateful even for our flaws, because in the end, they make us stronger by giving us a chance to reach beyond our grasp.

You may write me down in history With your bitter, twisted lies, You may trod me in the very dirt But still, like dust, I’ll rise. . . . You may shoot me with your words, You may cut me with your eyes, You may kill me with your hatefulness, But still, like air, I’ll rise.

As the Nigerian author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie writes, “It’s not your job to be likable. It’s your job to be yourself.

Knowing what to expect next gives children a sense of security.

The powerful admitted a mistake, thereby robbing it of its hold on them.

The episodic, reactive, almost frantic pace of what is broadcast makes children feel and act frantic and shortens their attention spans and their patience for activities that take time and problems that don't yield immediate solutions.

I’m not sure how to solve all this. My gender is my gender. My voice is my voice. To quote Secretary of Labor Frances Perkins, the first woman to serve in the U.S. Cabinet, under FDR, “The accusation that I’m a woman is incontrovertible.” Other women will run for President, and they will be women, and they will have women’s voices. Maybe that will be less unusual by then.

For everyone here in Ohio and across America who's been ever been counted out but refused to be knocked out, for everyone who has stumbled but stood right back up, and for everyone who works hard and never gives up -- this one is for you.

In my experience, the balancing act women in politics have to master is challenging at every level, but it gets worse the higher you rise. If we’re too tough, we’re unlikable. If we’re too soft, we’re not cut out for the big leagues. If we work too hard, we’re neglecting our families. If we put family first, we’re not serious about the work. If we have a career but no children, there’s something wrong with us, and vice versa. If we want to compete for a higher office, we’re too ambitious. Can’t we just be happy with what we have? Can’t we leave the higher rungs on the ladder for men? Think how often you’ve heard these words used about women who lead: angry, strident, feisty, difficult, irritable, bossy, brassy, emotional, abrasive, high-maintenance, ambitious (a word that I think of as neutral, even admirable, but clearly isn’t for a lot of people).

It was another example of a phenomenon I call "the talking dog syndrome." Some people are still amazed that any woman (this includes Governors' wives, corporate CEOs, sports stars and rock singers) can hold her own under pressure and be articulate and knowledgeable. The dog can talk!

You Can't Keep Wild Animal In Your Back Yard And Expect It To Go only After Your Neighbor.

If we only stopped to listen to them for a few minutes, kids could tell us that we move too fast, for their good and ours.

Noli Timere. Be not afraid.

Parenthood has the power to redefine every aspect of life - marriage, work, relationships with family and friends. Those helpless bundles of power and promise that come into our world show us our true selves- who we are, who we are not, who we wish we could be.

The commentator Peter Daou, who worked on my 2008 campaign, captured my feelings when he tweeted, “If Trump had won by 3 million votes, lost electoral college by 80K, and Russia had hacked RNC, Republicans would have shut down America.

One thing that has never been a hard choice for me is serving our country. It has been the greatest honor of my life.

women are seen favorably when they advocate for others, but unfavorably when they advocate for themselves.

To know oneself is, above all, to know what one lacks. It is to measure oneself against Truth, and not the other way around. —Flannery O’Connor

Do all the good you can, by all the means you can, in all the ways you can, in all the places you can, at all the times you can, to all the people you can, as long as ever you can.

The coldest peace is better than the warmest war.

It hurts to be torn apart.

And it’s the only way I see forward for myself. I can carry around my bitterness forever, or I can open my heart once more to love and kindness. That’s the path I choose.

I think that if you live long enough, you realize that so much of what happens in life is out of your control, but how you respond to it, is in your control. That's what I try to remember.

All of us face hard choices in our lives. Some face more than their share. We have to decide how to balance the demands of work and family. Caring for a sick child or an aging parent. Figuring out how to pay for college. Finding a good job, and what to do if you lose it. Whether to get married—or stay married. How to give our kids the opportunities they dream about and deserve. Life is about making such choices. Our choices and how we handle them shape the people we become. For leaders and nations, they can mean the difference between war and peace, poverty and prosperity.

He was experienced enough to know that the weak blustered, denied, lied, and struck out wildly. The powerful admitted a mistake, thereby robbing it of its hold on them. Only the truly formidable could afford to show contrition. Far from displaying weakness, the American Secretary of State had demonstrated immense strength and resolve.

forward-thinking teachers and school administrators across the country are creating a whole range of alternatives to cookie-cutter teaching and evaluation methods, such as the use of student portfolios and exhibitions in addition to conventional exams to assess students' progress.

Over the years, I’ve hired and promoted a lot of young women and young men. Much of the time, this is how it went: ME: I’d like you to take on a bigger role. YOUNG MAN: I’m thrilled. I’ll do a great job. I won’t let you down. YOUNG WOMAN: Are you sure I’m ready? I’m not sure. Maybe in a year? These reactions aren’t innate. Men aren’t naturally more confident than women. We tell them to believe in themselves, and we tell women to doubt themselves. We tell them this in a million ways, starting when they’re young. We’ve got to do better. Every single one of us. What would happen if one woman told the truth about her life?

There are eighteen-million cracks in the ceiling.

we are living in an interdependent world where what our children hear, see, feel, and learn will affect how they grow up and who they turn out to be.

Republicans persuaded whites in places like West Virginia to vote against their economic interests by appealing to them on cultural issues— in other words, “gays, guns, and God.

Politics was reduced to its most tribal , “us” versus “them,” and “them” grew into a big list: blacks, Latinos, immigrants , liberals , city dwellers, you name it.

Strength is what it’s all about. Trump doesn’t think in terms of morality or human rights, he thinks only in terms of power and dominance.

While there are few problems in today’s world that the United States can solve alone, there are even fewer that can be solved without the United States. Everything that I have done and seen has convinced me that America remains the “indispensable nation.

I think all this may help explain why women leaders around the world tend to rise higher in parliamentary systems, rather than presidential ones like ours. Prime ministers are chosen by their colleagues—people they’ve worked with day in and day out, who’ve seen firsthand their talents and competence. It’s a system designed to reward women’s skill at building relationships, which requires emotional labor.

While there are few problems in today’s world that the United States can solve alone, there are even fewer that can be solved without the United States. Everything that I have done and seen has convinced me that America remains the “indispensable nation.” I am just as convinced, however, that our leadership is not a birthright. It must be earned by every generation.

I’m often asked how I take the criticism directed my way. I have three answers: First, if you choose to be in public life, remember Eleanor Roosevelt’s advice and grow skin as thick as a rhinoceros. Second, learn to take criticism seriously but not personally. Your critics can actually teach you lessons your friends can’t or won’t. I try to sort out the motivation for criticism, whether partisan, ideological, commercial, or sexist, analyze it to see what I might learn from it, and discard the rest. Third, there is a persistent double standard applied to women in politics - regarding clothes, body types, and of course hairstyles - that you can’t let derail you. Smile and keep going.

I’m not jealous of my male colleagues often, but I am when it comes to how they can just shower, shave, put on a suit, and be ready to go. The few times I’ve gone out in public without makeup, it’s made the news. So I sigh and keep getting back in that chair, and dream of a future in which women in the public eye don’t need to wear makeup if they don’t want to and no one cares either way.

While you were looking outward, scanning the horizon for threats," he continues, "you missed what was happening in your own backyard. What was taking root right here, on American soil. In your towns, your shops, in your heartland. Among your friends, in your families. The sensible conservatives moving to the right. The right moving far right. The far right becoming alt-right. Becoming, in their rage and frustration, radicalized thanks to an internet filled with crazy theories, false 'facts' and smug politicians allowed to spew lies.

Donald Trump didn’t invent sexism, and its impact on our politics goes far beyond this one election. It’s like a planet that astronomers haven’t precisely located yet but know exists because they can see its impact on other planets’ orbits and gravities. Sexism exerts its pull on our politics and our society every day, in ways both subtle and crystal clear.

But too many of Trump’s core supporters do hold views that I find—there’s no other word for it—deplorable. And while I’m sure a lot of Trump supporters had fair and legitimate reasons for their choice, it is an uncomfortable and unavoidable fact that everyone who voted for Donald Trump—all 62,984,825 of them—made the decision to elect a man who bragged about sexual assault, attacked a federal judge for being Mexican and grieving Gold Star parents who were Muslim, and has a long and well-documented history of racial discrimination in his businesses. That doesn’t mean every Trump voter approved of those things, but at a minimum they accepted or overlooked them. And they did it without demanding the basics that Americans used to expect from all presidential candidates, from releasing tax returns to offering substantive policy proposals to upholding common standards of decency.

I have a weakness for Pepperidge Farm Goldfish crackers and was delighted to find out that 55 goldfish were only 150 calories - not bad! One time, Liz brought something I hadn't tried before: Flavor Blasted Goldfish. We passed around the bag and discussed whether it was better than the original. Some of my staff thought yes, which was incorrect.

Bill was watching Trump’s speech on television. He couldn’t believe it. Neither could I. Eventually everyone left, and it was just us. I hadn’t cried yet, wasn’t sure if I would. But I felt deeply and thoroughly exhausted, like I hadn’t slept in ten years. We lay down on the bed and stared at the ceiling. Bill took my hand, and we just lay there.

There was one major fact that kept the balance steady between us: I still needed my mother. I needed her shoulder to lean on; I needed her wisdom and advice. I used to come home from a long day in the Senate—or, in 2007 and 2008, from a day on the campaign trail—and slide in next to her at our kitchen table and let all my frustrations and worries tumble out. Mostly, she just listened. When she gave advice, it always came down to the same basic idea: you know the right thing to do. Do what’s right.

Given the choice between bedlam and a dictatorship, what do you think the American people will choose? Driven by fear of another attack, in a state of terror, they'll do the terrorists' work for them. They'll destroy their own freedoms. Accept, even applaud , the the suspension of rights. Internment camps. Torture. Expulsions. The liberal agenda, women's equality, gay marriage, immigrants, will be blamed for the death of the real America. But thanks to the bold action of a patriotic few, the white Angle-Saxon Christian, God-fearing America of their grandparents will be restored. And if they have to slaughter a few thousand to achieve it, well, it is war, after all. The beacon that was America will die, by suicide. Frankly it was coughing up blood anyway.

I tried to lose myself in books. Our house is packed with them, and we keep adding more. Like my mother, I love mystery novels and can plow through one in a single sitting. Some of my recent favorites are by Louise Penny, Jacqueline Winspear, Donna Leon, and Charles Todd. I finished reading Elena Ferrante’s four Neapolitan novels and relished the story they tell about friendship among women. Our shelves are weighed down with volumes about history and politics, especially biographies of Presidents, but in those first few months, they held no interest for me whatsoever. I went back to things that have given me joy or solace in the past, such as Maya Angelou’s poetry: You may write me down in history With your bitter, twisted lies, You may trod me in the very dirt But still, like dust, I’ll rise. . . .

They knew that the worse Washington looked, the more voters would reject the idea that government could ever be an effective force for progress. They could stop most good things from happening and then be rewarded because nothing good was happening. When something good did happen, such as expanding health care, they would focus on tearing it down, rather than making it better. With many of their voters getting their news from partisan sources, they had found a way to be consistently rewarded for creating the gridlock voters say they hate.

Do I feel empathy for Trump voters? That’s a question I’ve asked myself a lot. It’s complicated. It’s relatively easy to empathize with hardworking, warmhearted people who decided they couldn’t in good conscience vote for me after reading that letter from Jim Comey . . . or who don’t think any party should control the White House for more than eight years at a time . . . or who have a deeply held belief in limited government, or an overriding moral objection to abortion. I also feel sympathy for people who believed Trump’s promises and are now terrified that he’s trying to take away their health care, not make it better, and cut taxes for the superrich, not invest in infrastructure. I get it. But I have no tolerance for intolerance. None. Bullying disgusts me. I look at the people at Trump’s rallies, cheering for his hateful rants, and I wonder: Where’s their empathy and understanding? Why are they allowed to close their hearts to the striving immigrant father and the grieving black mother, or the LGBT teenager who’s bullied at school and thinking of suicide? Why doesn’t the press write think pieces about Trump voters trying to understand why most Americans rejected their candidate? Why is the burden of opening our hearts only on half the country? And yet I’ve come to believe that for me personally and for our country generally, we have no choice but to try. In the spring of 2017, Pope Francis gave a TED Talk. Yes, a TED Talk. It was amazing. This is the same pope whom Donald Trump attacked on Twitter during the campaign. He called for a “revolution of tenderness.” What a phrase! He said, “We all need each other, none of us is an island, an autonomous and independent ‘I,’ separated from the other, and we can only build the future by standing together, including everyone.” He said that tenderness “means to use our eyes to see the other, our ears to hear the other, to listen to the children, the poor, those who are afraid of the future.