Harriet Tubman and Sojourner Truth were slaves by birth, freedom fighters by temperament.
Interpretation
This quote highlights the transformative journey from being enslaved to becoming advocates for freedom.
Nancy Gibbs' quote emphasizes the deep resilience and bravery of Harriet Tubman and Sojourner Truth, who, despite their origins as slaves, emerged as powerful figures in the fight for freedom. Their innate spirit and determination to challenge oppression define them not just by their birth circumstances but by their unwavering commitment to liberation and justice.
In practice
In a speech about social justice, referencing this quote can inspire activists to continue the fight for equality.
Americans sometimes ask what the government does and where their tax money goes. Among other things, it pays for all kinds of invisible but essential safety nets and life belts and guardrails that are useless right up until the day they are priceless.
Most professional women I know - myself included - long since gave up looking for a rulebook or a roadmap; we make it up as we go along. Every day presents a new choice, a new challenge, which makes long-term career planning seem like an especially abstract exercise.
Virtues, like viruses, have their seasons of contagion. When catastrophe strikes, generosity spikes like a fever. Courage spreads in the face of tyranny.
The battles after the wars are over can be the toughest; there's no longer the public interest that accompanies, for good and for ill, the start of combat.
Girls grow up scarred by caution and enter adulthood eager to shake free of their parents' worst nightmares. They still know to be wary of strangers. What they don't know is whether they have more to fear from their friends.
All our efforts to guard and guide our children may just get in the way of the one thing they need most from us: to be deeply loved yet left alone so they can try a new skill, new slang, new style, new flip-flops. So they can trip a few times, make mistakes, cross them out, try again, with no one keeping score.
Among many who sought to deter me, was one dear old Christian gentleman, whose crowning argument always was, "The cannibals! you will be eaten by cannibals!" At last I replied, "Mr. Dickson, you are advanced in years now, and your own prospect is soon to be laid in the grave, there to be eaten by worms; I confess to you, that if I can but live and die serving and honouring the Lord Jesus, it will make no difference to me whether I am eaten by cannibals or by worms."
Very often as a little girl, then as a young woman, I have suffered my lot of discrimination. I was brought up with brothers; I grew up in a boys' world. You have to elbow your way in. When you come with that sentiment of having been in a minority for a long period of time, then you are much more attentive to minorities.
You may write me down in history With your bitter, twisted lies. You may trod me in the very dirt, but still like dust, I'll rise.
I'm not taking jobs anymore where I'm getting paid a quarter of what the male co-star is being paid. I'm not allowing that in my life.
The way to defeat fear: decide on a course of conduct and follow it. Keep so busy and work so hard that you forget about being afraid.
I am not going to die, I'm going home like a shooting star.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.