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I Quotes

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All I Quotes

“I received a letter just before I left office from a man. I don't know why he chose to write it, but I'm glad he did. He wrote that you can go to live in France, but you can't become a Frenchman. You can go to live in Germany or Italy, but you can't become a German, an Italian. He went through Turkey, Greece, Japan and other countries. But he said anyone, from any corner of the world, can come to live in the United States and become an American.”

“I received a most amusing postcard the other morning. Unfortunately, it was not signed in a readable manner so I cannot answer it privately. But it comes from Moblie, Ala., and says: 'Dear Mrs. Roosevelt: You have not answered my question, the amount of Negro blood you have in your veins, if any.' I am afraid none of us know how much nor what kind of blood we have in our veins, since chemically it is all the same. And most of us cannot trace our ancestry more than a few generations.”

“I received a wonderful email after I spoke at a school from a girl who'd lived in a war zone and endured horrors no human being should suffer, let alone a child. This young lady was fortunate to be bought to Britain and seemed to adjust well, but suddenly found herself falling off the rails and sliding into hell when I chatted to her. In her letter, she told me the difference that I'd made. She's now 20 years old and a fashion designer employing staff and she puts her work ethic down purely to talking to me. It's my most treasured letter.”

“I received comments on how extraordinary it was that I could keep up speaking for exactly 45 minutes. Indeed, in an age of soundbites lasting some seconds and of quick quotes in the news, all those minutes do seem like an eternity, easy to get lost in. Yet, wait a moment. Television is not the only place where speeches are given. Some hundred thousand teachers teach every day. They all speak 45 minutes, more times a day. They have been doing this for years. Every teacher knows exactly when the time will be over and that by then his speech will need to come to a natural end. It is this tension that determines the success of a lesson. It is a sign of the times that we forget these daily achievements in education. A million students daily attend several ‘live’ lectures and this in secondary education alone. These are high ratings!”

“I received everything I wanted when I hadn’t wanted anything. Why? Because I didn’t need anything. I was content in my space. Relying on myself. Reveling in me. Not curious of who I wanted to be. Being content is almost scary. It feels robotic at times. It’s standing in front of a mirror and being okay with what you see. That’s scary to some people. That used to be scary to me.”

“I received so many hate letters when I breast-fed a starving baby in Africa. I was in Sierra Leone in 2009 and I was weaning my child at that time - she was not there with me. There was a hungry baby who was crying because his mother had no milk, and I thought, 'Why throw away my milk if I can give it to a baby who needs it?'”

“I received the fundamentals of my education in school, but that was not enough. My real education, the superstructure, the details, the true architecture, I got out of the public library. For an impoverished child whose family could not afford to buy books, the library was the open door to wonder and achievement, and I can never be sufficiently grateful that I had the wit to charge through that door and make the most of it.”

“I received the Media for Liberty Award from Swedish PEN, and the prize was awarded by the Swedish minister of culture, who also happens to be the minister of sport. When she handed me the award, I said, Thank you, it's wonderful to be recognized, but we journalists always want more. So madam minister, I have a personal favor to ask you: Do not go to Sochi. And she announced that she was going to Sochi, but she's not attending the ceremonies, for political reasons. It's a very pointed stance.”

“I recently asked more than seventy eminent researchers if they would have done I their work differently if they had thought Darwin's theory was wrong. The responses were all the same: no. I also examined the outstanding biodiscoveries of the past century: the discovery of the double helix; the characterization of the ribosome: the mapping of genomes; research on medications and drug reactions: improvements in food production and sanitation; the development of new surgeries; and others. I even queried biologists working in areas where one would expect the Darwinian paradigm to have most benefited research, such as the emergence of resistance to antibiotics and pesticides. Here, as elsewhere, I found that Darwin's theory had provided no discernible guidance, but was brought in, after the breakthroughs, as an interesting narrative gloss.”