Quote of the Day

I have not failed.  I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work.

-- Thomas Edison

Quote of the Day

Needing approval is a female cultural disease, and often a sign of doing the wrong thing.

-- Gloria Steinem, My Life on the Road, p. 165

Quote of the Day

But the acrimony of the campaign reaffirmed something I knew instinctively: sports for women still smacked of revolution to a lot of men, especially in the South.  There was a deep resistance to Title IX.  I saw and felt it every day.  When I took the junior national team to Mexico City for the Pan Am Games, the men stayed in a comfortable hotel, while we were assigned to a dilapidated old dormitory from the 1968 Olympic Games that was so filthy our players wouldn't get under the bedsheets, and the showers had standing water in them.

-- Pat Summitt with Sally Jenkins, Sum It Up, p. 131

Quote of the Day

Assumptions and animosity are the evil cousins of prejudice and extremism.

-- Dawn Elizabeth Waters, Switching Teams, p. 150

Quote of the Day

I am a fan of getting people together.

-- Ellen DeGeneres

Quote of the Day

Women are always better liked if we sacrifice ourselves for something bigger -- and something bigger always means including men, even though something bigger for men doesn't usually mean including women.

-- Gloria Steinem, My Life on the Road, p. 165

Quote of the Day

To summon the competitiveness to work every single day for a goal that was months and even years ahead was the most invaluable lesson I'd ever learn.

-- Pat Summitt with Sally Jenkins, Sum It Up, p. 114

Quote of the Day

I believed I was still Dawn.  Being a lesbian was one small part of me.  I thought once the initial shock of the situation had worn off many who reacted negatively would circle back because they would realize I was still me.  After that first year, it became clear to me how naive I was.  I had failed to truly consider other people's opinions about this "lifestyle" I now subscribed to.  For some, this is a deal breaker of sorts.  I felt very confused by this and wondered what in the hell was going on.  I had many individuals who were very supportive, friends and family alike, however, there seemed to be a definite change in a lot of people after this information came to light.  I thought long and hard about the reasons and kept coming to a point where [I] was looking around and wondering where everyone went.

-- Dawn Elizabeth Waters, Switching Teams, p. 62

Quote of the Day

What I advocate is that we take seriously the genuine feelings that have been suppressed since childhood and that go on eking out an existence in the cellar of the soul.

-- Alice Miller, The Body Never Lies, p. 221

Quote of the Day

The most widespread and lasting impact of the [1992] Senate Judiciary hearings was not the Year of the Woman -- and perhaps not even the ascension to the Supreme Court of a very right-wing and young Clarence Thomas, likely to be there for a long time; it was the new national understanding of sexualized intimidation as a means of keeping females in a subordinate place.  The whole country learned that sexual harassment was illegal.  Millions of women learned they were not alone in their experience of it.  The use of sex to humiliate and dominate would never seem normal again.

-- Gloria Steinem, My Life on the Road, p. 156

Quote of the Day

When you set a goal of such distant possibility and reach it, you gain an insight into what it takes that lasts the rest of your life.

-- Pat Summitt with Sally Jenkins, Sum It Up, p. 114

Quote of the Day

I also noticed I suddenly found myself listening to taxicab type confessions from those who had just learned I was a lesbian.  A number of people shared with me their stories of their secret same sex experiences.  One went so far as to describe their participation in an online porn site.  I checked for the "tell me your dirt" sign that someone must have placed on my forehead.  I wanted to believe that because I had shared something personal they felt the green light to do likewise.  I suspect it had more to do with the overall negative opinion the world holds with regard to homosexuality.  I was naive to be optimistic that they saw a sympathetic soul rather than a deviant one.  Many equate being gay with living in a way that is not in alignment with what is believed to be the right way.  Instead of being upset and offended, I concluded these conversations were merely a way to relate to one another and a way to reassure ourselves we are not outcasts or deviants.

-- Dawn Elizabeth Waters, Switching Teams, p. 58-59

Quote of the Day

The "love" of formerly abused children for their parents is not love.  It is an attachment fraught with expectations, illusions, and denials, and it exacts a high price from all those involved in it.

-- Alice Miller, The Body Never Lies, p. 204

Quote of the Day

For one, (small talk)'s boring.  Two, I'm a great believer in the logic of economics.  Economists talk about opportunity cost.  The opportunity cost of making small talk is that I can't get a lot of other things done.

-- Barney Frank

Quote of the Day

At every stop, Catholic officials condemned (Geraldine Ferraro) for supporting family planning and legal abortion.  I noticed they hadn't attacked Senator Ted Kennedy, also a pro-choice Catholic, in the same way -- as if tacitly admitting that it was strong, rebellious women who were the problem.  Also reporters kept asking Ferraro if a women could be "tough enough" to "push the button," meaning declare a war, though they didn't ask male candidates if they would be wise enough not to.

-- Gloria Steinem, My Life on the Road, p. 155

Quote of the Day

The meaning of awe is to realize that life takes place under wide horizons, horizons that range beyond the span of an individual life or even the life of a nation, a generation, or an era.  Awe enables us to perceive in the world intimations of the divine, to sense in small things the beginning of infinite significance, to sense the ultimate in the common and the simple; to feel in the rush of the passing the stillness of the eternal.

-- Abraham Joshua Heschel

Quote of the Day

I was a newly minted twenty-two-year-old coach, and the young woman looking back at me was twenty-one.  I was only two or three months older than her, and a season earlier had stood on a court playing against her.  Yet now I was supposed to tell her what to do.  I was bluffing.  How did I begin?  I just began -- put one foot in front of the other.

-- Pat Summitt with Sally Jenkins, Sum It Up, p. 89

Quote of the Day

Obviously, coming out was a challenge not only for me, but for those in my life.  Let's just say that my Christmas card list shrank considerably.  Some relationships remained the same after the shock had dissipated, but others changed in ways I still have a difficult time understanding.  Relationships are complicated and many of those complications were compounded after I came out.  

-- Dawn Elizabeth Waters, Switching Teams, p. 58

Quote of the Day

Love that excludes honesty does not deserve the name of love.

-- Alice Miller, The Body Never Lies, p. 204

Quote of the Day

Women of all groups were measurably more likely than their male counterparts to vote for equality, health, and education, and against violence as a way of solving conflict.  It wasn't about biology, but experience.

-- Gloria Steinem, My Life on the Road, p. 154

Quote of the Day

The more committed you are to your ideals, the more obligated you are to be pragmatic about implementing them.

-- Barney Frank

Quote of the Day

Everyone I know who's been on their path for a while and thriving more than ever has details and routines they take seriously.  Some people begin each day with a walk, others sit in silence for a set period of time every afternoon, some eat at the same restaurant every weekday for lunch, others wear an outfit or uniform when they work, some say prayers at certain times, some go for a run in the late afternoon.  How you order your time, how you arrange the physical space you work in, what you wear, the tools you use, the food you eat and the times you eat it, the people you meet with at set times -- all theses details matter.

-- Rob Bell, How to Be Here, p. 176

Quote of the Day

Did I have grievances as a young woman?  You bet.  But protesting or sign carrying wasn't me -- and wasn't going to get it done.  Billie Jean [King], now there was an influential force.  Was there anything more equalizing than her sheer toughness, her combination of smarts and muscle?  I wanted to influence, and to change.  But there was only one way I could see that changed things: winning.  You changed things for women by winning.

-- Pat Summitt with Sally Jenkins, Sum It Up, p. 79

Quote of the Day

My coming out just topped off the cup of interesting in my family.

-- Dawn Elizabeth Waters, Switching Teams, p. 57

Quote of the Day

If I seek genuine expression of my feelings in a genuine form of communication, everything that was built on lies and insincerity will fall away from me.  Then I will no longer strive for a relationship in which I pretend to have feelings that I do not have, or suppress others that I do have.

-- Alice Miller, The Body Never Lies, p. 204

Quote of the Day

Then, even Nixon supported the Equal Rights Amendment and allowed his Justice Department to support civil rights, much as Goldwater and later the first President Bush did.  But by the time of Bush II, none of those earlier candidates could have made it past Republican primaries inundated with busloads of voters from about thirty thousand fundamentalist churches plus other white ultraconservatives, many of whom had been Democrats before that party got "too inclusive" of black, brown, and female human beings ... Slowly, control of the Republican platform and most primaries was taken over by economic and religious interests that opposed efforts to increase equality by race, sex, class, or sexuality.

-- Gloria Steinem, My Life on the Road, p. 145-146

Quote of the Day

Just remember, at any given moment you are so much more focused on you than almost anybody else is.

-- Francis X. Bellotti

Quote of the Day

Central to creating a life worth living is understanding that you have more power over your time than you realize.

-- Rob Bell, How to Be Here, p. 176

Quote of the Day

Above all, be the heroine of your life, not the victim.

-- Nora Ephron

Quote of the Day

I shuddered each time I heard the phrase "Well, I love you anyway" [when I told them that I was gay].  It implied there was a problem and communicated there was some kind of flaw in me that needed overlooking.  I hate the word "anyway."  I had a difficult time accepting people's attempts to be supportive even though the "anyway" was immediately followed by a general wish for my happiness.  These were the people who had known me the longest.  While I understood the information I shared with them would take time to be fully absorbed, I still cringed when I heard the word "anyway."

-- Dawn Elizabeth Waters, Switching Teams, p. 56