Feminists

"I have the duty to fight for tolerance for those who are different and with whom we have differences and disagreements. We do not need tolerance for those with whom we agree. Tolerance is the foundation of peaceful coexistence, understanding that we are all different in this world."

"I also come with a huge social debt and with the need to defend the Amazon, the seas, and our great rivers of America."

"I also bear the consequences of the electronic surveillance, which does nothing but create the distrust that poisons us needlessly."

"I bear upon my shoulders the indigenous cultures, the remains of colonialism in the Malvinas, and the futile and regrettable blockades of Cuba under the Caribbean sun."

"I am greatly anguished by the future that I will not see, and to which I have committed myself. Yes, it is possible to have a world with better humankind, but perhaps today the main task is to save life..."

"This is why I say, in my humble way of thinking, that the problem we are facing is political. The old thinkers. Epicurus, Seneca and even the Aymara put it this way, a poor person is not someone who has little but one who needs infinitely more, and more and more.” This is a cultural issue."

"I’m not talking about returning to the days of the caveman, or erecting a “monument to backwardness.” But we cannot continue like this, indefinitely, being ruled by the market, on the contrary, we have to rule over the market."

"Today, man does not govern the forces he has unleashed, but rather, it is these forces that govern man; and life. Because we do not come into this planet simply to develop, just like that, indiscriminately. We come into this planet to be happy. Because life is short and it slips away from us. And no material belonging is worth as much as life, and this is fundamental.But if life is going to slip through my fingers, working and over-working in order to be able to consume more, and the consumer society is the engine-because ultimately, if consumption is paralyzed, the economy stops, and if you stop economy, the ghost of stagnation appears for each one of us, but it is this hyper-consumption that is harming the planet. And this hyper-consumption needs to be generated, making things that have a short useful life, in order to sell a lot. Thus, a light bulb cannot last longer than 1000 hours. But there are light bulbs that last 100,000 hours! But these cannot be manufactured, because the problem is the market, because we have to work and we have to sustain a civilization of “use and discard”, and so, we are trapped in a vicious cycle. These are problems of a political nature, which are showing us that it’s time to start fighting for a different culture."

"What are we thinking?...What would happen to this planet if Indians would have the same proportion of cars per household [as] Germans? How much oxygen would we have left? Does this planet have enough resources so... eight billion can have the same level of consumption & waste that today is seen in rich societies? It is this level of hyper-consumption that is harming our planet... Are we ruling over globalization or is globalization ruling over us? Is it possible to speak of solidarity and of “being all together” in an economy based on ruthless competition? How far does our fraternity go? I am not saying any of to undermine the importance of this event. On the contrary, the challenge ahead of us is of a colossal magnitude and the great crisis is not an ecological crisis, but rather a political one."

"That NATO advance makes no sense. It is going to lead us again to a division of the world."

"Anyone who looks at a map to say that Venezuela could be a threat has to be quite mad. Venezuelans have a marvelous Constitution – the most audacious in all of Latin America."

"We are a republican voice for the world – a proclamation that has been interpreted to signpost a “possible future, a path, however modest, to take for the common good with politics as its ethical base and honesty as its guiding light."

"Locked up, I almost went mad... Now I'm a prisoner of my own freedom to think and decide as I wish. I cultivate that freedom and fight for it. I may make mistakes, some huge, but one of my few virtues is I say what I think... I re-read Plato in search of keys to understand what is going on, for nothing is completely new... Politics, which should rule human relations, has succumbed to economics and become a mere administrator... My definition of poverty is the one we owe to Seneca: It is not the man who has too little, but the man who craves more, who is poor... I have the aggressive courage to speak out. It's not done in the modern world, where people conceal and disguise their feelings. Maybe that's why I get people's attention... This [marijuana] law is a trial. It doesn't mean we have the final answer....The only thing I'm sure of is that the policy of combating drugs which has been enforced for decades is a crashing failure.... I think recognition of gay marriage, abortion and the law on marijuana all represent progress. But they will really achieve something when there is less of a gap between the poor, the destitute and the very rich... You know what getting old means? No longer wanting to leave home."

"The philosophy of my heart is libertarian. I don’t like the idea of the exploitation of man by man. I believe that one day human civilization will overcome this somehow. But that is not to say that I favour the state as the owner of everything, no, no, no. I can’t conceive of that. I lean a lot towards self-management, with all of the risks it entails for any important institution. It is not exactly the state that should manage things, it’s the people that have to manage them."

"Bourgeois democracy: I defend it and I criticise it. What do I criticise? That it promises a degree of equality that it does not fulfill in practice.. If democracy has to represent the majority, as a symbol I understand that those who have the highest responsibilities should live as the majority does, not the minority. We have become feudal and the monarchy has come back in a different form.Bold text Presidents—the red carpet, those who play cornets, vassals on the bridge, all this paraphernalia which is not republican, because republics came into the world to reaffirm this: that men are basically equal."

"Liberalism has the idea that democracy is its invention, that liberalism had to come about for democracy to exist... Democracy is old, very old; it is an attitude of man… Democracy is an imminent attitude, but one that has always been in crisis with authoritarianism. So democracy can never be considered to be finished or perfect, the end of history does not exist, historical steps exist. Maybe today conditions are being created--thanks to digital mass-communication—that are going to foreshadow a kind of democracy that today we cannot imagine."

"That (Guantanamo Bay detention camp) isn’t a prison. It’s a kidnapping den, because a prison entails subjection to some system of law, the presence of some sort of prosecutor, the decision of some judge — whomever that may be — and a minimal point of reference from a judicial point of view. Guantánamo has nothing."

"We've been talking all afternoon about sustainable development. To get the masses out of poverty. But what are we thinking? Do we want the model of development and consumption of the rich countries? I ask you now: what would happen to this planet if Indians would have the same proportion of cars per household than Germans? How much oxygen would we have left? Does this planet have enough resources so seven or eight billion can have the same level of consumption and waste that today is seen in rich societies? It is this level of hyper-consumption that is harming our planet. (Speech at the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development, Rio+20, June 2012)"

"I'm called 'the poorest president', but I don't feel poor. Poor people are those who only work to try to keep an expensive lifestyle, and always want more and more. This is a matter of freedom. If you don't have many possessions then you don't need to work all your life like a slave to sustain them, and therefore you have more time for yourself."

"Orphaned at the age of seven, Chido Govera escaped a life of poverty and abuse in rural Zimbabwe. Now she's an activist, travelling the world to help others change their lives"

"From those experiences there's some kind of lesson that inspires me to do what I do now, but I'm not back in the moment when I was 10. I've dealt with that. I just look at the future with a new hope. I'm 100% sure that I am not going to be one of those women who say, 'Things are the way they are because I grew up as an orphan"

"I've been able to reclaim myself. This is something that's required for every individual. We are not what happened to us"

"I learned to redefine myself regardless of what happened to me when I was a kid"

"I don't think I would be doing what I'm doing now in Zimbabwe if I didn't believe there is a possibility for a change"

"One of my biggest dreams, of course, never having met my father, was to actually have a father"

"In this case it was converting waste into food, creating food for the community, but also doing something that no one else in that community was doing. We were unique in that time, doing something that was highly scientific without having studied at all. In my case I'd only done five years of primary-level education. It was like magic"

"You realise that if you can work, you can actually get there step by step, you can put food on your plate"

"My grandmother was so knowledgeable that even when she couldn't see any more she could smell which mushrooms were edible, inedible, poisonous … But to grow them was very strange"

"When I was eight years old I'd told myself, 'I want to help other young orphans so they do not have to experience what I was experiencing.' I thought, 'If I get married, am I achieving that or not?' And it was clear that was not the way to go. I didn't go to meet the guy and my relative told me, 'I tried to help you, you turned that down and from now on you're pretty much on your own"

"I did not go because I realised if I got married, then I was leaving my grandmother and my little brother alone and I wouldn't be able to help them any more"

"The reason why I was supposed to find it attractive to marry him was because he had two sisters that were going to South Africa to buy clothing and coming back to Zimbabwe"

"I remember I cried many days after that and I used to watch other kids going to school that I used to run around with, and it was painful. But it was more painful to go to school and spend the whole time thinking about what's going to happen when I get home. Getting back home to watch the hungry faces of my granny and little brother. It was unbearable"

"It was tough"

"I strongly believe that, regardless of what is happening in politics – not just in Zimbabwe but in many different parts of the world – if we want to change things, we will need to go to the grassroots and teach them to stand up for themselves, because if we can empower them beyond being a victim of a political situation, then we are making change happen."

"The reason why I go into communities, select groups of young orphans, empower those and bring them back into the communities to inspire change there is because we need to change the way change is viewed. People say politicians or the grownups or the successful ones are going to change things in the country, but I think everyone has a part to contribute."

"I learned to redefine myself regardless of what happened to me when I was a kid, I've been able to reclaim myself. This is something that's required for every individual. We are not what happened to us."

"People don't see what they have, they're busy looking at what they don't have and worrying about how they can get there, and yet when they start by appreciating what they have, then their lives will be different and their goal in life will not be to project what they don't have and to use it to define themselves when they can learn to define themselves by what they have."

"od examples, they ignore family responsibilities and are not strict enough with their children the way parents were in the past."

".” (In Rwanda, politicians enter politics to get “bread” instead of serving citizens)"

"“However it is disturbing that so many of our citizens experience cases of gender-based corruption in their offices, that is why I call on all employers to immediately put in place mechanisms to prevent and punish such cases.”"

"“Although justice is done, we are not satisfied because this is a capital offence which deserves a maximum sentence.”"

"“This sends a message that there is no impunity for people who try to stop the fight against corruption… Although justice is done, we are not satisfied because this is a capital offence which deserves a maximum sentence…”"

"In Rwanda, politicians go into politics to grab bread more than to serve citizens.”"

"“If you are a parent and you accept that someone who abused your child is released, if a parent allows someone to go free after abusing a child, what about the next one?” Plus: “That person deserves to be punished in prison… children from other families should be safe.”"

"There is no one to challenge those in leadership; some people misappropriate State funds because there is no one caring, no follow up, money is used as they wish.”"

"“If you go to RIB and ask for the data … we have it, not just in my head but in our work, and in all districts.”"

"I do not accept the statistic that unity and reconciliation among Rwandans is 94%, because genocide ideology is still visible both among adults and children."

"If a person wants to give a bribe to a given official, they go through a chain of people whose network is difficult to link. For instance, a person wanted to offer bribe [via mobile money] to a prosecutor and passed it through [the phone number of] their former house servant."

"Traffic police officers these days tell car drivers to go and pretend to urinate in a nearby place, then put the bribe where they can see so that they come and continue the journey. The Police officer goes and pick it later."

"There is a saying that many or high taxes spoil taxation. What this means is that if you ask people for taxes that are within their means, you will encourage more people to honour their duties. It is always better to increase gradually"