Great Throughts Treasury

"Today's college student is lazy and uninformed."

"Today's electronic village has certainly complicated the challenge of parenting. When It Takes a Village was published, the Internet was largely the province of scientists; no one owned an iPod; and cell phones weighed as much as bricks. Innovations are now coming at an exponentially faster pace, and media saturates our kids' lives as never before. Many of these changes are for the good: when I was in college, a phone call home was rare and a flight home, a once-a-year luxury. Now I know parents who see and speak to their kids every day by computer and video hookups, and I think how much Bill would have loved that when he was campaigning. But knowing that one third of kids under six have TVs in their rooms, that the fashion industry is marketing its latest styles to preteen girls, and that predators stalk our children through the World Wide Web makes me thankful to have raised Chelsea in a less media-saturated time."

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

"Voting is the most precious right of every citizen, and we have a moral obligation to ensure the integrity of our voting process."

"Violence toward women isn’t cultural; it’s criminal."

"We are Americans, We have the right to participate and debate any administration."

"We have a lot of kids who don't know what works means. They think work is a four-letter word. "

"We have a close, unshakable bond between the United States and Israel, and between the American and Israeli people. We share common values and a commitment to a democratic future for the world, and we are both committed to a two-state solution. But that doesn't mean that we're going to agree. "

"We are here to advance the cause of women and to advance the cause of democracy and to make it absolutely clear that the two are inseparable. There cannot be true democracy unless women's voices are heard. There cannot be true democracy unless women are given the opportunity to take responsibility for their own lives."

"We don’t have enough support for maternal leave and the kinds of things that some of the European countries do. So we still make it hard on women to go into the work force and feel that they can be good at work but then doing the most important job, which is raising your children in a responsible and positive way."

"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."

"We must stop thinking of the individual and start thinking about what is best for society."

"We need to be as well prepared to defend ourselves against public health dangers as we should be to defend ourselves against any foreign danger."

"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. "

"We would very much like to see Iran take a position as a responsible leader that doesn't intimidate or threaten or scare its neighbors and others. But the choice is really up to Iran and we're going to keep working to try to come out with the right decision."

"We will also stand united behind our President as he and his advisors plan the necessary actions to demonstrate America's resolve and commitment. Not only to seek out and exact punishment on the perpetrators, but to make very clear that not only those who harbor terrorists, but those who in any way aid or comfort them whatsoever will now face the wrath of our country. And I hope that that message has gotten through to everywhere it needs to be heard. You are either with America in our time of need or you are not."

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

"What was once justified as sanctioned by God is now properly reviled as an unconscionable violation of human rights."

"When I defend my pro-choice position in the debate over abortion in our country, I frequently refer to Romania, where pregnancy could be monitored on behalf of the state, and to China, where it could be forcibly terminated. One reason I continue to oppose efforts to criminalize abortion is that I do not believe any government should have the power to dictate, through law or police action, a woman’s most personal decision. [The Romanian dictatorship in the 1980s] banned birth control and abortion, insisting that women bear children for the sake of the state. Women told me how they had been carted from their workplace once a month to be examined by government doctors whose task was to make sure they weren’t using contraceptives or aborting pregnancies. I could not imagine a more humiliating experience. In Romania and elsewhere, many children were born unwanted or into families that could not afford to care for them. They became wards of the state, warehoused in orphanages."

"When I am talking about It Takes a Village, I'm obviously not talking just about or even primarily about geographical villages any longer, but about the network of relationships and values that do connect us and binds us together."

"When any part of humanity is sidelined, the rest of us cannot sit on the sidelines."

"When I wrote It Takes a Village ten years ago, our daughter Chelsea, a lively teen, was engaged with school, church, ballet, and friends. Now that Chelsea is grown up, I look back and see more clearly than ever how much we benefited from the village every step of the way and how much better off she is for having not just two parents, but other caring adults in her corner. And I have yet to meet a parent who didn't feel the same way."

"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. "

"While we are each free to believe whatever we choose, we cannot do whatever we choose. "

"Why extremists always focus on women remains a mystery to me. But they all seem to. It doesn’t matter what country they’re in or what religion they claim. They all want to control women. They want to control how we dress. They want to control how we act. They even want to control the decisions we make about our own health and our own bodies. Yes, it is hard to believe but even here at home we have to stand up for women’s rights and we have to reject efforts to marginalize any one of us, because America has to set an example for the entire world."

"You cannot have maternal health without reproductive health. And reproductive health includes contraception and family planning and access to legal, safe abortion."

"Would you tell your parents something for me? Ask them, if they have a gun in their house, please lock it or take it out of their house. Will you do that as good citizens? [to a group of schoolchildren]"

"Women have always been the primary victims of war. Women lose their husbands, their fathers, their sons in combat. Women often have to flee from the only homes they have ever known. Women are often the refugees from conflict and sometimes, more frequently in today’s warfare, victims. Women are often left with the responsibility, alone, of raising the children."

"You know, people make a lot of money talking about me, don't they? They just get on those shows, and they talk away. There's nothing I can do. And that's one of the great lessons I try to convey in my book, which my mother implanted in me as a young girl… You can either be an actor in your own life, or a reactor in somebody else's."

"You look at the movies that have tried to predict what will happen in the future, and we often see a lot of death and destruction and environmental degradation. It’s not just that people might live under domes on Mars, but they would have to live under domes here on this planet because of what we will have done to our environment. Or whether we will have to join together as human beings to stave off attacks from aliens in outer space, and then we’ll have to put aside our really petty differences—differences in our own country and differences among people around the world—to stand up for our common humanity."