The fact that I made it to where I made it, when I look at where I came, I think is a message to the world and it's also a message to other young people who come from diverse and underprivileged backgrounds, that where they come from does not necessarily have to define where they are going.
Interpretation
Your background doesn't determine your future potential.
This quote emphasizes the idea that one's origins or socioeconomic status do not dictate their future success or achievements. It serves as an inspiring reminder to individuals, particularly young people from diverse and underprivileged backgrounds, that they have the ability to shape their own destinies and rise above their circumstances.
In practice
In a speech addressing high school students, I might say, 'Remember what Linda Thomas-Greenfield said about not letting your background define you.'
Throughout my career, from Jamaica to Nigeria, Pakistan to Switzerland, I've learned that effective diplomacy means more than shaking hands and staging photo ops. It means developing real, robust relationships. It means finding common ground and managing points of differentiation. It means doing genuine, old-fashioned, people-to-people diplomacy.
Those of us who experience racism cannot, and should not, internalize it, despite the impact that it can have on our everyday lives. We must face it down, every time, no matter whom it's directed towards.
I think countries are now, leaders are now more conscious of the importance of having women engage in their country's development plan. Because again, and I say this over and over and over again, when we invest in women they invest back in their families, they invest in their communities, and they invest in their countries.
The more we elevate people's lives - the more we treat people with dignity and respect and honor their rights and freedoms - the more we discourageand even preventterrorism.
It is unconscionable for Russia to force Ukrainian citizens into Russia, and put them in what will basically be concentration and prisoner camps.
In so many of our communities and countries, racism is endemic. It's built in, like a rot in a frame.
I think that young women and little girls need to see that they don't have to be the damsel in distress. They don't have to not show their strength. They don't have to be whatever the stereotype is or the tropes that we go to in our minds.
I was sold on flying as soon as I had a taste for it.
Give light, and people will find the way...
The only thing a star asks is to be allowed to twinkle.
I would enjoy flying to Mars. This was the dream of the first cosmonauts. I wish I could realize it! I am ready to fly without coming back.
When you consider all the writers who never even had a machine. Who would have given an eyeball for a good typewriter. Any typewriter. All the ones who wrote on a matchbook covers. Paper bags. Toilet paper. Who had their writing destroyed by their jailers. Who persisted beyond all odds.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.