My parents were both born and raised in the Depression. They instilled great values about integrity and the importance of hard work, and I've taken that with me to every job.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the foundational values of integrity and hard work instilled by parents during a difficult era.
Mary Barra reflects on how her parents, shaped by the hardships of the Great Depression, imparted essential values such as integrity and hard work. These principles have become guiding forces in her professional life, highlighting the long-lasting impact of parental influence on an individual's character and work ethic.
In practice
This quote can be shared during a graduation speech to inspire young graduates about the importance of hard work and values.
The biggest message I have for young women is, Don't start cutting off branches of your career tree unnecessarily early. Sometimes women say, I know I want to have a family or play in the local symphony, and they start pulling themselves out of their career path. You don't have to take yourself out of the running before you even start.
My definition of 'innovative' is providing value to the customer.
When people can't feed their children, nothing else positive happens. You don't have to look farther than the United States to see that.
Care about your children. Just bless them instead of worrying, as every child is the little Buddha who helps his parents to grow up.
I understood that my family was rich in love but would probably never own the land my father, John, dreamed of owning. My mother, Willie Ella Mays Clarke, was a washerwoman for poor white folks in the area of Columbus, Georgia where the writer Carson McCullers once lived.
My problem was my inability to spend much time at home. I thought my family was secure, so I went running around everyplace else. I guess I had more of an effect on other people's kids than I did my own.
As a parent, it's my responsibility to equip my child to do this - to grieve when grief is necessary and to realize that life is still profoundly beautiful and worth living despite the fact that we inevitably lose one another and that life ends, and we don't know what happens after death.
Brain scans show synchrony between the brains of mother and child; but what they can't show is the internal bond that belongs to neither alone, a fusion in which the self feels so permeable it doesn't matter whose body is whose.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.