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.
We need never be hopeless because we can never be irreperably broken.
There's always constantly interesting things to do, and who knows, maybe I will be a good sculptor. I haven't decided what I am going to do next, but I am not going to quit just because I did something interesting.
I like to think of hope as a fact and something that wins out always. Whether you're hopeful or not, actually, you do get through what you're in the middle of. When you're in it, you don't feel like that's possible. But time and time again, we're proven wrong.
Try to be all you can be to be the best human being you can be. Try to be that in your church, in your temple. Try to be that in your classroom. Do it because it is right to do.
Hope Smiles from the threshold of the year to come, Whispering 'it will be happier'.
Be a woman of Christ. Cherish your esteemed place in the sight of God. He needs you. This church needs you. The world needs you. A woman's abiding trust in God and unfailing devotion to things of the Spirit have always been an anchor when the wind and the waves of life were fiercest.
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