It is not easy to stand up against your constituents or your friends or colleagues or your community and take a tough stand for something you believe is right. Because you always want to keep working and live to fight another battle and it might cost you your career.
Interpretation
Taking a principled stand can be challenging and may come with personal and professional risks.
Caroline Kennedy highlights the difficulty of standing up for one's beliefs, particularly when faced with opposition from peers or community members. It underscores the internal conflict between maintaining relationships and the necessity of integrity, suggesting that such stands may come at a cost to one's career, yet they are essential for personal convictions and societal progress.
In practice
During an acceptance speech, one might quote this to emphasize the importance of integrity in leadership.
Sometimes it takes a while to recognize that someone has a special ability to get us to believe in ourselves, to tie that belief to our highest ideals and imagine that together we can do great things. In those rare moments, when such a person comes along, we need to put aside our plans and reach for what we know is possible.
Now more than ever, I have learned that, when people die, they truly do live throughout those who love them.
Growing up in politics I know that women decide all elections because we do all the work.
I have never had a president who inspired me the way people tell me that my father inspired them. But for the first time, I believe I have found the man who could be that president - not just for me, but for a new generation of Americans.
When you're going through something, whether it's a wonderful thing like having a child or a sad thing like losing somebody, you often feel like 'Oh my God, I'm so overwhelmed; I'm dealing with this huge thing on my own.' In fact, poetry's a nice reminder that, no, everybody goes through it. These are universal experiences.
The bedrock of our democracy is the rule of law and that means we have to have an independent judiciary, judges who can make decisions independent of the political winds that are blowing.
Alas, not me, lord!" she said. "Shadow lies on me still. Look not to me for healing! I am a shieldmaiden and my hand is ungentle.
But what of black women?... I most sincerely doubt if any other race of women could have brought its fineness up through so devilish a fire.
I think I would have drank myself to death, literally, if I didn't just stop, once and for all when I did. I am not ever going to preach to anyone about drugs or drinking. But, for me, when they were around, I had no self control.
All of us feel, I think, that our experiences can be the worst possible thing you can go through and that we're alone in it, which is isolating and intense and insurmountable. But we can get over it.
The fact is, human rights victories are rarely won by powerful governments or well-armed militaries. More often than not, these battles are led by individuals and small groups of people determined to overcome wrong. Think King, Gandhi, Mandela.
I take the medication for myself so I can transact, not for anyone else. But I am aware that it is empowering for people to see what I do and, for the most part, people in the Parkinson's community are just really happy that Parkinson's is getting mentioned, and not in a pitying way.
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