Quote of the Day

Trump also promised to reopen coal mines and revive the industry to its former glory.  But despite what he says, and what a lot of people want to believe, the hard truth is that coal isn't coming back.  As Trump's own director of the National Economic Council, Gary Cohn, admitted in a moment of candor in May 2017, "Coal doesn't even make that much sense anymore."  Politicians owe it to communities that have relied on the industry for generations to be honest about the future.

-- Hillary Rodham Clinton, What Happened, p. 282-283

Quote of the Day

One of the most important but least recognized facts in American politics is that Republicans tend to win in places where more people are pessimistic or uncertain about the future, while Democrats tend to win where people are more optimistic ... And some of the most doom-and-gloom Americans are relatively affluent middle-aged and retired whites -- the very viewers Fox News prizes -- while many poor immigrants, people of color, and young people are burning with energy, ambition, and optimism.

-- Hillary Rodham Clinton, What Happened, p. 278

Quote of the Day

When my husband was a little boy, his uncle Buddy in Hope, Arkansas, liked to say: "Anybody who tries to make you mad and stop you from thinking is not your friend.  There's a lot to be said for thinking."

-- Hillary Rodham Clinton, What Happened, p. 278

Quote of the Day

Democrats' long-standing support for environmental regulations that protect clean air and water and seek to limit carbon emissions has been an easy scapegoat for the misfortunes of the coal industry and the communities that have depended on it.  The backlash reached a fever pitch during the Obama administration, despite strong evidence that government regulation is not the primary cause for the industry's decline.

-- Hillary Rodham Clinton, What Happened, p. 273-274

Quote of the Day

Well-behaved women seldom make history.

-- Laurel Thatcher Ulrich

Quote of the Day

Usually when I meet people who are frustrated and angry, my instinctive response is to to talk about how we can fix things.  That's why I spent so much time and energy coming up with new policies to create jobs and raise wages.  But in 2016 a lot of people didn't really want to hear about plans and policies.  They wanted a candidate to be as angry as they were, and they wanted someone to blame.  For too many, it was primarily a resentment election.  That didn't come naturally to me.  I get angry about injustice and inequality, abuse of power, lying, and bullying.  But I've always thought it's better for leaders to offer solutions instead of just more anger.  That's certainly what I want from my leaders.  Unfortunately, when the resentment level is through the roof your answers many never get a hearing from the people you want to help most.

-- Hillary Rodham Clinton, What Happened, p. 271-272

Quote of the Day

I love people who harness themselves, an ox to a heavy cart,
who pull like water buffalo, with massive patience,
who strain in the mud and the muck to move things forward,
who do what has to be done, again and again.

-- Marge Piercy

Quote of the Day

Advancing the rights and opportunities of women and girls is the unfinished business of the twenty-first century.

-- Hillary Rodham Clinton, What Happened, p. 257

Quote of the Day

To console does not mean to take away the pain but rather to be there and say, "You are not alone, I am with you.  Together we can carry the burden.  Don't be afraid.  I am here."  That is consolation.  We all need to give it as well as to receive it.

-- Henri Nouwen

Quote of the Day

The yearning for change springs from deep in the character of our restless, questing, constantly-reinventing-itself country.  That's part of what makes America great.  But we don't always spend enough time thinking about what it takes to actually make the change we seek.  Change is hard.  That's one reason we're sometimes taken in by leaders who make it sound easy but don't have any idea how to get anything done.

-- Hillary Rodham Clinton, What Happened, p. 195-196

Quote of the Day

I don't want to be married just to be married.  I can't think of anything lonelier than spending the rest of my life with someone I can't talk to, or worse, someone I can't be silent with.

-- Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows

Quote of the Day

I think about something I heard Erica [Smegielski, the daughter of the Sandy Hook Elementary principal who died trying to protect her students,] say during the campaign.  She was explaining how she picked herself up after the loss of her mother and decided to devote her life to gun safety.  "What if everyone who faced tough odds said, 'It's hard, so I'm going to walk away'?" she asked.  "That's not the type of world I want to live in."  Me neither, Erica.

-- Hillary Rodham Clinton, What Happened, p. 191

Quote of the Day

Ginger Rogers did everything Fred Astaire did, just backward and in high heels.

-- Ann Richards

Quote of the Day

Republicans like to rile up their base with tales about how I was going to shred the Constitution and take away their guns.  It didn't matter that I said the opposite as clearly as I could, including in my acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention: "I'm not here to repeal the Second Amendment.  I'm not here to take away your guns.  I just don't want you to be shot by someone who shouldn't have a gun in the first place.

-- Hillary Rodham Clinton, What Happened, p. 187

Quote of the Day

Your children are not your children.  They come through you but not from you.  You may give them your love but not your thoughts, for they have their own thoughts.  You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you, for life goes not backward, nor tarries with yesterday.

-- Kahlil Gibran

Quote of the Day

Gun violence touches every class, color, and community, with thirty-three thousand people dying from guns each year -- an average of ninety a day.  That's a particularly devastating fact because gun violence is largely preventable.  Other developed nations don't have this problem.  They have commonsense laws to keep guns out of the hands of dangerous people.  Those laws work.  They save lives.  The United States has made a cruel choice as a country not to take simple steps that would help prevent -- or at least lessen -- this epidemic.

-- Hillary Rodham Clinton, What Happened, p. 178

Quote of the Day

What would happen if one woman told the truth about her life?
The world would split open.

-- Muriel Rukeyser

Quote of the Day

Over the years, I've hired and promoted a lot of young women and young men.  Much of the time, this is how it went:

ME: I'd like you to take on a bigger role.
YOUNG MAN:  I'm thrilled.  I'll do a great job.  I won't let you down.
YOUNG WOMAN: Are you sure I'm ready?  I'm not sure.  Maybe in a year?

These reactions aren't innate.  Men aren't naturally more confident than women.  We tell them to believe in themselves, and we tell women to doubt themselves.  We tell them this in a million ways, starting when they're young.  We've got to do better.  Every single one of us.

-- Hillary Rodham Clinton, What Happened, p. 145

Quote of the Day

If you can't imagine why it would matter for many of us to see a woman elected President -- and that it wouldn't matter only to women, just like the election of Barack Obama made people of all races, not just African Americans, feel proud and inspired -- I'd simply urge you to accept that it matters to many of your fellow Americans, even if it doesn't to you.

-- Hillary Rodham Clinton, What Happened, p. 143

Quote of the Day

I remember being riveted as a little girl whenever a woman appeared in our history lessons: Abigail Adams, Sojourner Truth, Ida Tarbell, Amelia Earhart.  Even if it just amounted to a sentence in a dusty book -- and often that's all they got -- it thrilled me.  The great men in our history books thrilled me too, but it meant something different, something quietly momentous, to learn that a women had done something important.  It opened the world up a little more.  It made me dream a little bigger.

-- Hillary Rodham Clinton, What Happened, p. 142

Quote of the Day

There's yet another side to the matter of women in politics.  It's not just that politics can be rewarding for those women who choose to enter it.  In the long run, it also makes our politics better for everyone.  I believe this as strongly as I believe anything.  We need our politics to resemble our people.  When the people who run our cities, states, and country overwhelmingly look a certain way (say, white and male) and overwhelmingly have a shared background (wealthy, privileged) we end up with laws and policies that don't come close to addressing the realities of Americans' lives.  And since that's a basic requirement of government, it's a pretty big thing to get wrong.

-- Hillary Rodham Clinton, What Happened, p. 141

Quote of the Day

I don't have a lot to say about the Access Hollywood tape that hasn't been said.  I will just note that Donald Trump is gleefully describing committing sexual assault.  That got somewhat lost in the shock of it all.  Too many people focused on his boorishness -- such a crude man, so vulgar.  True.  But even if he were the height of elegance and graciousness, it wouldn't make it okay that he's describing sexual assault.

-- Hillary Rodham Clinton, What Happened, p. 138

Quote of the Day

"She's a slob."  "She ate like a pig."  "I'd look her right in that fat, ugly face of hers."  Was this the voice we wanted in our daughters' heads?  Our granddaughters'?  Our nieces'?  Or our sons' or grandsons' or nephews' heads for that matter?  They deserve better than the toxic masculinity Trump embodies.  Well, he's in their heads now.  His voice resounds far and wide.  Now it's on all of us to make sure his ugly words don't damage our girls -- and boys -- forever.

-- Hillary Rodham Clinton, What Happened, p. 138

Quote of the Day

Trump made fun of Carly Fiorina's face because she competed against him for President.  He lashed out against Megyn Kelly and Mika Brzezinski in gross, physical terms because they challenged him.  Maybe that's why Nicolle Wallace, White House Communications Director for George W. Bush, has warned that the Republican Party is in danger of being "permanently associated with misogyny" if leaders don't stand up to Trump's treatment of women.

-- Hillary Rodham Clinton, What Happened, p. 137

Quote of the Day

Arianna Huffington was recently interrupted in a meeting of the Uber board of directors when she was making a point about -- of all things -- how important it was to increase the number of women on the board!  And the man who talked over her did so to say that increasing women would only mean more talking!  You can't make this up.  In other words, this isn't something that only happens to me.  Not even close.

-- Hillary Rodham Clinton, What Happened, p. 137

Quote of the Day

I suspect that if a woman was as aggressive or melodramatic as (Trump) is, she'd be laughed or booed off the stage.

-- Hillary Rodham Clinton, What Happened, p. 135

Quote of the Day

I do not wish women to have power over men, but over themselves.

-- Mary Wollstonecraft