If you’ve been keeping up with American news, you know there have been some troubling and scary things happening in the USA. As a nation, we are dealing with serious questions about safety, about privacy, about violence, about justice, about rights and responsibilities. This is not a political blog, and I will not use it as such. But I wanted to spend today’s post quoting a woman who I’d admired before and is now impressing me with her wisdom and good sense.

Loretta Lynch is the current Attorney General, only the second woman overall and the first African-American woman in our history to serve as such. She’s a Harvard graduate and a former US Attorney, and as I see her on the news, I’m of the opinion that she’s fairly smart (and that might be an understatement). Here are some quotes that spoke to me.

Loretta Lynch Quotes:

• Others will always seek to define you based on what they think you represent or who they think you are. But you have to be the one to control what you do and what you say and how you present yourself.
• The power to arrest – to deprive a citizen of liberty – must be used fairly, responsibly, and without bias.
• When suspicion and hostility is allowed to fester it can erupt into unrest.
• Let us not act out of fear and misunderstanding, but out of the values of inclusion and diversity and regard for all that make our country great.
• It’s the choices that you make and the things that you’re willing to accept and not accept that define who you are.

You can find a more complete biography of Loretta Lynch here.