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Quotes

Quotes
Trainers and presenters often use quotes in violence against women prevention presentations and trainings. These quotes are used to motivate, provide historical context, and promote social action. Below are quotes that have been used in violence against women prevention.


“What hurts the victim most is not the cruelty of the oppressor, but the silence of the bystander.”

  • Elie Wiesel, Holocaust Survivor

“Too often we underestimate the power of a touch, a smile, a kind word, a listening ear, an honest compliment, or the smallest act of caring, all of which have the potential to turn a life around.”

  • Leo Buscaglia

“Now is the time. Needs are great, but your possibilities are greater.”

  • Bill Blackman

“Never apologize for showing feeling. When you do so, you apologize for the truth.”

  • Benjamin Disraeli

“A good heart is better than all the heads in the world.”

  • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

“Don’t judge each day by the harvest you reap … but by the seeds you plant!”

  • Robert Louis Stevenson

“Be of service. Whether you make yourself available to a friend or co-worker, or you make time every month to do volunteer work, there is nothing that harvests more of a feeling of empowerment than being of service to someone in need.”

  • Gillian Anderson

“Happiness lives for those who cry, those who hurt, those who have searched, and those who tried, for only they can appreciate the importance of people who have touched their lives.”

  • Author Unknown

“You cannot do a kindness too soon, for you never know how soon it will be too late.”

  • Ralph Waldo Emerson

“You may never know what results come from your action. But if you do nothing, there will be no results.”

  • Mahatma Ghandi

“That which is to give light must endure burning.”

  • Viktor Frankl

“The future depends on what we do in the present.”

  • Mahatma Gandhi

“No society that feeds its children on tales of successful violence can expect them not to believe that violence in the end is rewarded.”

  • Margaret Mead, anthropologist (1901-1978)

“The person who says it cannot be done should not interrupt the person doing it.”

  • Chinese Proverb

“Don’t curse the darkness. Light a candle.”

  • Chinese Proverb

“Obstacles cannot crush me. Every obstacle yields to stern resolve. He who is fixed on a star does not change his mind.”

  • Leonardo Divinci

“A nation is never conquered until the hearts of its women are on the ground.”

  • Native American Proverb

“Everywhere, by all means imaginable, people are striving to improve their lives. Yet strangely, my impression is that those living in materially developed countries, for all their industry, are in some ways less satisfied, are less happy, and to some extent suffer more than those in the least developed countries. Indeed, if we compare the rich with the poor, it often seems that those with nothing are, in fact, the least anxious, although they are plagued with physical pain and suffering. [The rich] are so caught up in the idea of acquiring still more that they make no room for anything else in their lives [so] they actually lose the dream of happiness.”

  • The Dalai Lama

“How does one become a butterfly?” she asked pensively. “You must want to fly so much that you are willing to give up being a caterpillar.”

  • Trina Paulus

“In speaking the truth of your experience to another, it will serve you well to realize that how they choose to respond is not your responsibility.”

  • Iyanla Vanzant

“Sometimes it is extremely good for you to forget that there is anything in the world which needs to be done, and to do some particular thing that you want to do. Every human being needs a certain amount of time in which he can be peaceful.”

  • Eleanor Roosevelt

“Holding on to anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone; you are the one who gets burned.

  • Buddha

“No person is your friend who demands your silence, or denies your right to grow.”

  • Alice Walker

“Appreciate yourself. The next time someone pays you a compliment, don’t shrug it off or put yourself down. When we push away acknowledgment of our divine selves, we can’t amplify the good that is trying to move through our lives. We can be humble and still accept praise. Accept that others are seeing the God within you. Take pleasure that others recognize your true identity. And give the gift of a compliment to someone else.”

  • Mary Manin Morrissey

“If we all tried to make other people’s paths easy, our own feet would have a smooth even place to walk on.”

  • Myrtle Reed

“When tears come, I breathe deeply and rest. I know I am swimming in a hallowed stream where many have gone before. I am not alone, crazy, or having a nervous breakdown… My heart is at work, my soul is awake.”

  • Mary Margaret Funk, Thoughts Matter: The Practice of a Spiritual Life

“People are like stained-glass windows. They sparkle and shine when the sun is out, But when the darkness sets in, their true beauty is revealed only if there is a light from within.”

  • Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

“How far you go in life depends on your being tender with the young, compassionate with the aged, sympathetic with the striving, and tolerant of the weak and the strong *because someday you will have been all of these.”

  • George Washington Carver

“I haven’t failed. I’ve found 10,000 ways that don’t work”

  • Thomas Edison

“Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”

  • Albert Einstein

“Compassion for others begins with kindness to ourselves.”

  • Pema Chodron

“Never worry about numbers. Help one person at a time, and always start with the person nearest you.”

  • Mother Teresa

“Kind words can be short and easy to speak, but their echoes are truly endless.”

  • Mother Teresa

“There isn’t anyone you couldn’t love once you heard their story.”

  • Mary Lou Kownacki

“When I was a child and would see scary things on the news, my mother would say to me, ‘Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.'”

  • Mr. Rogers

“The world breaks everyone and afterward some are strong at the broken places…”

  • Ernest Hemingway

“Being challenged in life is inevitable, being defeated is optional.”

  • Roger Crawford

“Blessed is the influence of one true, loving human soul on another.”

  • George Eliot

“People with clenched fists can not shake hands.”

  • Indira Gandhi

“Only after the last tree has been cut down. Only after the last river has been poisoned. Only after the last fish has been caught. Only then you will find that money cannot be eaten.”

  • Cree Indian Prophesy

“Worry gives a small thing a big shadow.”

  • Swedish Proverb

“Every act of love is a work of peace no matter how small.”

  • Mother Theresa

“Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted.”

  • Albert Einstein