Ruth Simmons Quotes

When ownership is local and national, and various stakeholders work together, program innovations have a greater chance to take root and survive.

I came to understand the value of education, not just to enable me to make a good living, but to enable me to make a worthwhile life.

There's nothing worse than a leader who lacks ambition.

Fear of failure is the fuel of achievement. If you weren't afraid to fail, you probably wouldn't be highly motivated to work at the level that most of us have to work at to do well.

The humanities don't belong to some elitist group... knowledge as a whole should be embraced.

the most important thing one can do for children is not accept the limitations they are so willing to impose on themselves.

Strategies for research and policy development must simultaneously address people's needs, the capacity of programs to provide good quality of care, and the range of technological options available.

There is strong mentoring of women in the academy. Corporations appear more willing to resist affirmative action to advance women, and boards and shareholders are more tolerant of this approach.

A longer time perspective is needed because we face a daunting task both in an intellectual and practical sense.

If I can give a very substantial injection of humanistic thinking into corporations, boy, that would change things a lot.

One of the things we have learned in the first year is that if you want to scale-up, the first thing you have to do is to expand your own team.

In fact it is essential that we strengthen efforts to learn from each other, and stop considering public health in the third world and in the U.S. as separate intellectual and practical endeavors.

If you want to scale-up, the first thing you have to do is to expand your own team.

We are trying to discover where this approach could have the greatest possibility of large-scale impact. We have to choose wisely and see where there is greatest interest and need.

It is not enough to give money for demonstration projects. From the very beginning plans should be made for the scaling-up of successful innovations.

I would like to make it possible for many women and men in Latin America to win the lottery and receive the type of reproductive health services they so urgently need.

We felt that the Gates Foundation looked at our track record and our publications and decided that "this is persuasive; this needs to be done. Let's see what they can do."

Governments have a legitimate concern with slowing population growth. But often this has been attempted with little concern for the individuals most affected.

Probably the first time I was a boss was when I was associate dean of the graduate school at the University of Southern California. I was in my early 30s.

I'm the youngest of 12 children. And although I was the youngest, I tried to organize things in my family. When there were disputes, I tried to mediate.

It really pains me greatly to hear from graduate students that graduate education is a lower priority here.