Quotes about Empowerment

Toni Morrison said, The function of freedom is to free someone else, and if you are no longer wracked or in bondage to a person or a way of life, tell your story. Risk freeing someone else. Not everyone will be glad that you did. Members of your family and other critics may wish you had kept your secrets. Oh, well, what are you going to do?

Haters want us to hate them, because hate is incapacitating. When we hate, we can't operate from our real selves, which is our strength.

Forgiving people doesn't necessarily mean you want to meet them for lunch. It means you try to undo the Velcro hook. Lewis Smedes said it best: "To forgive is to set a prisoner free and discover that the prisoner was you.

Haters want us to hate them because hate is incapacitating. When we hate we can't operate from our real selves, which is our strength.

But as Rumi said, "Through love all pain will turn to medicine," not most pain, or for other people; and the pain and failures grew me, helped slowly restore me to the person I was born to be. I had to learn that life was not going to be filling if I tried to scrunch myself into somebody else's idea of me, i.e., someone sophisticated enough to prefer dark chocolate. I like milk chocolate, like M&M's: so sue me. But I no longer have to stuff myself to the gills.

If you don't know where to start, remember that every single thing that happened to you is yours and you get to tell it.

Remember that you own what happened to you.

Perfectionism is the voice of the oppressor, the enemy of the people. It will keep you cramped and insane your whole life.

Boy, the young are angry at us. Good. This is what usually changes the world, although it's a new experience to be the us the young are mad at.

You don't want to spend your time around people who make you hold your breath. You can't fill up when you're holding your breath.

Learning is not done to you, it is something you choose to do.

Heretics must believe. More than anyone else in an organization, it's the person who's challenging the status quo, the one who is daring to be great, who is truly present and not just punching a clock who must have confidence in her beliefs. Can you imagine Steve Jobs showing up for the paycheck? It's nice to get paid. It's essential to believe.