Barbara Quotes

Memory is your image of perfection.

We believe that the people are the source of all governmental power; that the authority of the people is to be extended, not restricted.

What we have to do is strike a balance between the idea that government should do everything and the idea, the belief, that government ought to do nothing. Strike a balance.

At best the family teaches the finest things human beings can learn from one another generosity and love. But it is also, all too often, where we learn nasty things like hate, rage and shame.

Resentment is weak and lowers your self-esteem.

It is a fact of history that those who seek to withdraw from its great experiments usually end up being overwhelmed by them.

People's dreams are made out of what they do all day. The same way a dog that runs after rabbits will dream of rabbits. It's what you do that makes your soul, not the other way around.

I want people to be drawn into the space of the work. And a lot of people are like me in that they have relatively short attention spans. So I shoot for the window of opportunity.

What I want is so simple I almost can't say it: elementary kindness.

The failure to think positively can weigh on a cancer patient like a second disease.

A government is invigorated when each of us is willing to participate in shaping the future of this nation.

A pregnant woman facing the most dire circumstances must be able to count on her doctor to do what is medically necessary to protect her from serious physical harm.

Why am I an atheist? The short answer is that I cannot accept any of the alternatives. I simply don't find them believable.

Time is clay; make something.

Leaders come in two flavors, expanders and containers. The best leadership teams have a mix of both.

Sometimes grown ups don't act their right old age

There are various ways of mending a broken heart, but perhaps going to a learned conference is one of the more unusual.

There are some things too dreadful to be revealed, and it is even more dreadful how, in spite of our better instincts,we long to know about them.

The very least you can do in your life is to figure out what you hope for!

Life is cruel and we do terrible things to each other.

Imaginary obstacles are insurmountable. Real ones aren't.

Insecurity is a wonderful motivator.

In the long run, most of us spend about fifteen minutes total in the entanglements of passion, and the rest of our days looking back on it, humming the tune.

I think there are different ways of being rigorous, and I am asking people to be as rigorous in their pleasure as in their criticism.

Sometimes the only thing we do to avoid success is refuse to be energetic on our own behalf

That is the exciting thing: I don't know what God has given me for tomorrow.

I've never had a really creative idea sitting at my desk. All the big ideas that made a difference happened when I was playing outside.

Cats vary so widely that all data is meaningless and the professional classifiers gnash their teeth trying to come up with even a single fact common to all.

If you never stepped on anybody's toes, you never been for a walk.

True ownership of anything requires time.

The greatest gift God has given me is the capacity of love for people. I have so many faults, but caring about people is not one of them.

New York was where we wanted to live when we were finally grown up, and drink martinis and stay out past bedtime.

I think our civilization is minimal enough without underlining it. Sculpture as a created object in space should enrich, not reflect, and should be beautiful. Beauty is its function.

The most important part of a story is the piece of it you don't know.

It was very much a cry for democratic control at that time. Above all, breaking the accomplished power of a few people to rule the lives of everybody else.

There is no human failure greater than to launch a profoundly important endeavour and then leave it half done.

It's the one thing we never quite get over: that we contain our own future.

Your dreams, what you hope for and all that, it's not separate from your life. It grows right up out of it.

I've never seen a Brink's truck follow a hearse to the cemetery.

One of the greatest gifts of Black feminism to ourselves has been to make it a little easier simply to be Black and female.

Honor wears different coats to different eyes.

Forgiveness is a stunning principle, your ticket out of hate and fear and chaos.

Show me someone who never gossips, and I'll show you someone who isn't interested in people.

To gain victory over the flesh was the purpose of fasting and celibacy, which denied the pleasures of this world for the sake of reward in the next.

Violets are God's apology for February.

Everybody wants to go to heaven, but nobody wants to go there right away.

Buyers decide in the first eight seconds of seeing a home if they're interested in buying it. Get out of your car, walk in their shoes and see what they see within the first eight seconds.

Fairness is an across-the-board requirement for all our interactions with each other ...Fairness treats everbody the same.

Opening your chakras and allowing cosmic energies to flow through your body will ultimately refresh your spirit and empower your life.

For most people reform meant relief from ecclesiastical extortions.