Empowerment

Freedom is not something that anybody can be given; freedom is something people take and people are as free as they want to be.

The end of our foundation is the knowledge of causes, and secret motions of things; and the enlarging of the bounds of human Empire, to the effecting of all things possible.

Men have had every advantage of us in telling their own story. Education has been theirs in so much higher a degree; the pen has been in their hands.

You must be the change you wish to see in the world.

Nobody can hurt me without my permission.

I will not let anyone walk through my mind with dirty feet.

Freedom is not worth having if it does not include the freedom to make mistakes.

Be congruent, be authentic, be your true self.

As human beings, our greatness lies not so much in being able to remake the world (that is the myth of the atomic age) as in being able to remake ourselves.

A word after a word after a word is power.

The individual is the product of power.

I am the master of my fate; I am the captain of my soul.

We never know how high we are Till we are called to rise And then, if we are true to plan Our statures touch the skies.

Be neither saint- nor sophist-led, but be a man!

Strong is the soul, and wise, and beautiful: The seeds of godlike power are in us still: Gods are we, bards, saints, heroes, if we will.

A Lady with a Lamp [Florence Nightingale] shall stand In the great history of the land, A noble type of good, Heroic womanhood.

Of light is poesy; ’tis the supreme of power; ’Tis might half slumb’ring on its own right arm.

We feel that we are greater than we know.

And mistress of herself, though china fall.

She who ne’er answers till a husband cools, Or, if she rules him, never shows she rules; Charms by accepting, by submitting, sways, Yet has her humor most, when she obeys.

So absolute she seems And in herself complete, so well to know Her own, that what she wills to do or say, Seems wisest, virtuousest, discreetest, best.

Her virtue and the conscience of her worth, That would be woo’d, and not unsought be won.

If chance will have me king, why, chance may crown me, Without my stir.

Assume a virtue, if you have it not.