Elizabeth Lesser Quotes - Page 4

We'll never change everyone's minds. We're not supposed to.

If humanity does not evolve spiritually - each one of us and collectively - our species won't make it. So following that back to each individual - every day you are faced with choices.

We are able to choose what we want - you don't have to accept one thing from one tradition. It's a melting pot.

I'm very much a family person, and that's always my first priority.

I'm very committed to my family and my town. My biggest local commitment are my children, my husband, my home and my grandchildren.

What do you want in your life? What do you want in your relationships? And if you say, I'd like them to be harmonious; I'd like them to be free; I'd like not to be in a state of blame all the time or shame. If you answer like that, then I would say, look at what's unforgiven. Look at where you know you did wrong and you would like to go to that person and say - I'm sorry. Can we start over? If you want to have a happier life, I would say, practice forgiveness.

It seems to be almost a law of physics, that the winds of change awaken fear and fundamentalism.

I actually don't think we're more divided than we were.

Diversity is good. We need each other's ideas.

We need each other's ideas. Now, I'm not talking about racist ideas or misogynistic ideas or cruel or criminal ideas. I'm talking about most of us who have very varied experiences, needs and ideas. It's really about believing that it's an important part of healing America.

I'm calling my initiative take the other to lunch. If you are a Republican, you can take a Democrat to lunch or if you're a Democrat, think of it as taking a Republican to lunch because there is no shortage of the other right in your own neighborhood, maybe that person who worships at the mosque or the church or the synagogue down the street or someone from the other side of the abortion conflict - or maybe your brother-in-law who doesn't believe in global warming.

Anyone whose lifestyle may frighten you or whose point of view makes smoke come out of your ears.

We must pay attention to the voice that calls us out of the safety zone.

I hope this is the lesson we women really commit to memory - we learned that it doesn't work to try be someone other than who you really are.

I'm interested in helping women become courageous in being exactly who they are. Because the only way to change anything is to do it from your genuine self.

What wants to live in you may be waiting...at the end of a long loneliness.

It's rare that you have a conflict and two people or two groups who are equally mature in their desire or capacity to get there. That doesn't mean it can't happen. What it means is that one person has to take the lead, has to be bigger. I call that kind of person the new first responder.

Forgiveness doesn't mean being a wimp. It doesn't mean being weak. It doesn't mean having no principles and no values. Sometimes we have to stand firm for what we believe and make really hard decisions.

We need to claim our power for something beautiful, something harmonious and something globally healthy.

If it's not as easy as we thought it was, for women to speak our truth, to even know our truth, then the missing ingredient is some sort of inner courage. To first of all, believe in the validity of who we are. And then to speak from it. It takes inner courage. As a leader in a large organization, I've often been the only woman working with powerful men, especially when I was younger.

If you have fathered a child, if you have given birth, if sex is a source of healthy pleasure, thank your pelvis and your reproductive organs for allowing you to feel the creative rhythms of life.

I was just a kid when I started doing this,yoga, meditation, natural foods, acupuncture - things like were seen as practically voodoo. And today you can go into any hospital and they'll have massage, and Chinese medicine, and therapy, and a prayer room.

It's like you trade the virility of the body for the agility of the spirirt.

Read any of the top-selling business books, all of them talk about moving away from a top down manner of leading to a more inclusive one. It's not happening over night, but if you read the winds of change in most of the democracies in the world we are moving toward shared levels of power.

I would say to women, always question what you're empowering yourself for and what are you claiming power for.