Category Archives: The Quotable Nerdy Chick

Celebrating Women in March

by kamikinard

iwd_square

One thing I enjoy about blogging is the opportunity it gives me to learn. Today when I went online to find quotes for our Quotable Nerdy Chick feature, I stumbled across the above logo and decided it was worth noting that today is International Women’s Day. This is something I didn’t know when  I woke up this morning. If you click on the logo, it will take you to the official site. A demand for better working conditions for women, drove the movement to recognize this day.

I pulled a quote from the International Women’s Day site to share today:

 “The story of women’s struggle for equality belongs to no single feminist nor to any one organization but to the collective efforts of all who care about human rights” Gloria Steinem

Most of you are probably aware that this is Women’s History Month. Should I admit that I didn’t realize this until last week when I was gathering information for a previous post? Should I? I know my co-blogger would advise me not to admit my ignorance, but there you have it. And in case any of you were unaware, or want to find out more about it, click HERE. The link will take you to my favorite page on the Women’s History Month site, where thumbnails of Library of Congress photos of women will link you to collections from images of the United States first ladies to Rosie the Riveter inspired images.

We’ll be back to our usual quotes next Friday!

100 years ago today….

by kamikinard
Women demonstrating, 100 years ago, for the right to vote.

Women demonstrating, 100 years ago, for the right to vote.

Five thousand women marched along Pennsylvania Avenue and demanded the right to vote. This was a huge step toward being awarded that right on August 26, 1920. So today we celebrate Sudan B Anthony’s words of wisdom.  Anthony (1820-1906) is known for her work with the United States’ women’s rights movement. Today, nerdy chicks everywhere salute her eloquence.

Susan B. Anthony Quotes

• It was we, the people; not we, the white male citizens; nor yet we, the male citizens; but we, the whole people, who formed the Union.

• Men – their rights and nothing more; Women – their rights and nothing less.

• The older I get, the greater power I seem to have to help the world; I am like a snowball — the further I am rolled the more I gain.

• I can’t say that the college-bred woman is the most contented woman. The broader her mind the more she understands the unequal conditions between men and women, the more she chafes under a government that tolerates it.

• I always distrust people who know so much about what God wants them to do to their fellows.

• If all the rich and all of the church people should send their children to the public schools they would feel bound to concentrate their money on improving these schools until they met the highest ideals.

• Bicycling has done more to emancipate women than any one thing in the world. It gives her a feeling of self-reliance and independence the moment she takes her seat; and away she goes, the picture of untrammeled womanhood.

Susan b

The Quotable Nerdy Chick: Michelle Rhee

by sudiptabq

File:Michelle Rhee at NOAA.jpgToday’s Quotable Nerdy Chick is someone I have admired for a long time. Michelle Rhee is the daughter of Korean immigrants who has become a force on the American education stage. Not everyone agrees with her positions — I can’t say that I always do, either — but it is impossible to deny her passion for school reform and her commitment to every child’s right to a quality education.

Michelle started her career as a teacher in Baltimore, Maryland. In 1997, she founded The New Teacher Project, a non-profit organization that has trained over 43,000 teachers to work in many of our country’s city schools. Between 2007 and 2010, she was chancellor of the Washington, D.C. public schools, and when she left that position, she founded StudentsFirst, an organization which is devoted to political advocacy on education reform issues.

Quotes from Michelle Rhee: 

  • “As a nation, we should get engaged and involved in changing laws that are not serving kids.”
  • “Are we beholden to the public school system at any cost, or are we beholden to the public school child at any cost?”
  • On the perceived failures of the public education system: “I have talked with too many teachers to believe this is their fault. I know they are working furiously in a system that for many years has not appreciated them — sometimes not even paying them on time or providing textbooks. Those who categorically blame teachers for the failures of our system are simply wrong.”
  • “My job is to hear all the input, and then as the leader, then decide which are the things that I think are going to move student achievement forward in this district. And I have to make those decisions. That doesn’t mean that I’m not listening. It just means I have to choose to take into consideration all of that input.”
  • On teacher’s unions: “People often say to me the teachers unions are here to stay, that they are big players, that I have to find a way to get along. I actually disagree with that. It’s important for us to lay out on the table what we’re willing to do, but what our bottom line is for kids. The bottom line is that if you can’t come to agreement then you have to push your agenda in a different way, and we’re absolutely going to do that.”
  • “Creativity is good and whatever. But if the children don’t know how to read, I don’t care how creative you are. You’re not doing your job.”

To learn more about Michelle Rhee, click HERE.

The Quotable Nerdy Chick: Tina Fey

by kamikinard

Tina Fey (b. 1970) is an American comedian, writer, and producer.  I’ve been a fan since first seeing her on Saturday Night Live. This week marked the final episode 😦 of 30 Rock, a show Fey wrote for and starred in. Tina_Fey_by_David_ShankboneThe list of awards she has received for writing and acting is very long and includes Emmys, Golden Globes, and People’s Choice Awards.  To find out more about this smart, funny woman click HERE.

Tina Fey Quotes:

  • Mary Tyler Moore was a working woman whose story lines were not always about dating and men. They were about work and friendships and relationships, which is what I feel my adult life has mostly been about.
  • Somewhere around the fifth or seventh grade I figured out I could ingratiate myself to people by making them laugh. Essentially, I was just trying to make them like me. But after a while it became part of my identity.
  • Being a mom has made me so tired. And so happy.
  • I became immersed in the cult of improvisation. I was like one of those athletes trying to get into the Olympics. It was all about blind focus. I was so sure that I was doing exactly what I’d been put on this earth to do, and I would have done anything to make it onto that stage.
  • Confidence is ten percent hard work and ninety percent delusion.
  • Don’t worry about trying to change opinions. Do your thing and don’t care if they like it.

I love what she says about confidence… and even though I think it’s probably a true statement, I cling to the delusion!

The Quotable Nerdy Chick: Frances Perkins

by sudiptabq

File:Image FrancesPerkinsAfterRooseveltsDeath.jpgIn 1933, Franklin Delano Roosevelt appointed a woman named Frances Perkins as Secretary of the Department of Labor. This was the first time a woman held a cabinet position in the United States. She held this position for twelve years, the longest tenure of any Secretary of Labor. That means Frances was not only the first time a woman to enter the presidential line of succession, but that she was in line for the job for over a decade. As astonishing as this is, Frances was probably so used to breaking convention by that point that it hardly shortened her stride. After all, she went to court to defend her right to keep her own name after she got married (in a time when women were really only known by their association with men) and she was sole wage earner in her family. As Secretary of Labor through the New Deal, Frances put a lasting mark on American life and culture. We can thank her for things like social security, unemployment insurance, federal child labor laws, and the federal minimum wage. Find out more about this amazing Nerdy Chick HERE.

Frances Perkins Quotes:

  • “Being a woman has only bothered me in climbing trees.”
  • “The door might not be opened to a woman again for a long, long time, and I had a kind of duty to other women to walk in and sit down on the chair that was offered, and so establish the right of others long hence and far distant in geography to sit in the high seats.”
  • “I promise to use what brains I have to meet problems with intelligence and courage. I promise that I will be candid about what I know. I promise to all of you who have the right to know, the whole truth so far as I can speak it. If I have been wrong, you may tell me so, for I really have no pride in judgment.”
  • “Most of man’s problems upon this planet, in the long history of the race, have been met and solved either partially or as a whole by experiment based on common sense and carried out with courage.”

The Quotable Nerdy Chick: Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin

by sudiptabq

File:Dorothy Hodgkin Nobel.jpgOn August 14, 1969, Dr. Dorothy Hodgkin used a science she had pioneered — X-ray crystallography — to decipher the three-dimensional structure of insulin, a protein that plays an important role in diabetes. This discovery helped scientists understand how to treat the symptoms of diabetes. What is remarkable is that this momentious discovery was made after Dorothy had been awarded the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1964, only the third woman to ever win this Nobel Prize (the other two were Marie Curie in 1911 and her daughter, Irene Joliet-Curie, in 1935). Dorothy was awarded the Nobel Prize for her work on the structure of a different important molecule, vitamin B-12.

For most people, a Nobel prize would be enough. Not Dorothy! She also was the second woman to receive the Order of Merit (after Florence Nightingale), the first woman to receive the Copley Medal, a Fellow of the Royal Society, a recipient of the Lenin Peace Prize, the Longstaff Medal, the Mikhail Lomonosov Gold Medal, the Dimitrov Prize 1984. Oh, and she’s on a stamp, too. Learn more about Dorothy HERE.

Quotes from Dorothy Hodgkin:

  • “I was captured for life by chemistry and by crystals.”
  • “I meant to, to study chemistry, and it was really intended by my family that, whatever happened, I should go to Oxford, which was where my father had been before me, because sadly he had no boys, so I had to manage.”
  • “There are two moments that are important. There’s the moment when you know you can find out the answer and that’s the period you are sleepless before you know what it is. When you’ve got it and know what it is, then you can rest easy.”
  • “One’s tendency when one is young is to do experiments just to see what will happen, without really looking for specific things at all. I first set up a little laboratory in the attic at home just to grow crystals or try experiments described in books, such as adding a lot of concentrated sulfuric acid to the blood from a nosebleed which precipitates hemotin from the hemoglobin in the blood. That was quite a nice experiment. I still remember it.”

The Quotable Nerdy Chick: Mother Teresa

by kamikinard

Mother Teresa (1910 – 1997) was baptized Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu as a baby. She spent most of her adult life in mother teresaIndia helping the poor, but people around the world know her name – a name that has become synonymous with compassion and selflessness. She won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979 for her humanitarian work. There is much more to be said about who she was and what she achieved! Read more about her life HERE.

Mother Teresa Quotes:

  • Being unwanted, unloved, uncared for, forgotten by everybody, I think that is a much greater hunger, a much greater poverty than the person who has nothing to eat.
  • Love begins at home, and it is not how much we do… but how much love we put in that action.
  • Be faithful in small things because it is in them that your strength lies.
  • We ourselves feel that what we are doing is just a drop in the ocean. But the ocean would be less because of that missing drop.
  • Intense love does not measure, it just gives.

Given so many recent violent tragedies, I am left wondering what the world would be like if we could all love in the way Mother Teresa did, intensely. And I’m hoping that we will see more love than hatred in the world in 2013.

The Quotable Nerdy Chick: Suze Orman

by kamikinard

Suze Orman (b. 1951) is one of America’s top financial advisors. She is also a New York Times best-selling author and a promotional speaker. Suze Orman became interested in finances after she borrowed $50,000 to start a bakery and lost it. Since devoting her time to studying finances and subsequently working in finances, Suze has helped countless others manage their money and has brought her own wealth to an estimated thirty six million dollars. She has been named of the 100 most powerful women in the world by Forbes Magazine.  We just begin to touch on her accomplishments here. Visit her website to find out more about this smart, savvy woman.

Suze Orman Quotes

  • People first, then money, then things.
  • In all realms of life it takes courage to stretch your limits, express your power, and fulfill your potential.. it’s no different in the financial realm.
  • We never had it as rough as the kids have it today, … Look at the price of a gallon of gas or a piece of real estate or a college education.
  • Each cent you apply toward diminishing your debt replenishes you.
  • Men and women both have an equal capacity to make money, but they want money for different reasons. Men want money for power and women want it for comfort, and usually not their own comfort, but the comfort of others in their lives.

 

Quotable Nerdy Chick: Clara Barton

by kamikinard

Clara Barton (1821 – 1912) founded the American Red Cross. In these post-Sandy days, I think we know what a hugely positive influence she has had on our country, and around the world. Barton spent several years working as a teacher, then in 1854 she became the first woman to become a clerk in the US Patent office.  Later her position was eliminated due to protests over giving a female this job. It’s no surprise that later, when she met Susan B. Anthony, she became involved in the women’s sufferage movement. She also became an activist of civil rights after meeting Frederick Douglas. Barton spent most of her life helping others. Read more about her in this biography.  

Clara Barton Quotes

• I may sometimes be willing to teach for nothing, but if paid at all, I shall never do a man’s work for less than a man’s pay.

• Everybody’s business is nobody’s business, and nobody’s business is my business.

• The door that nobody else will go in at, seems always to swing open widely for me.

• An institution or reform movement that is not selfish, must originate in the recognition of some evil that is adding to the sum of human suffering, or diminishing the sum of happiness.

• I have an almost complete disregard of precedent and a faith in the possibility of something better. It irritates me to be told how things always have been done …. I defy the tyranny of precedent. I cannot afford the luxury of a closed mind. I go for anything new that might improve the past.

If everyone agreed with that last quote… oh what a future would lie before us! Onward we go…

The Quotable Nerdy Chick: Belva Lockwood

by sudiptabq

In honor of the upcoming election, this week’s Quotable Nerdy Chick is one of my personal favorites: Belva Lockwood. It’s sad to me how many people have never heard of Belva. She was such a fascinating woman that I believe she should be a household name.

In the United States in 1884, only men were allowed to vote. But Belva decided that she would take a bold but legal step: she ran for president! After all, the law only prohibited women from voting, not from getting votes. And, believe it or not, Belva got votes! She ran an effective campaign and actually convinced hundreds of men to vote for a woman for president. But don’t think they were sympathy votes! Belva’s run for office was based on experience and merit: unlike many women of the time, she went to college, then to law school, and even argued cases before the Supreme Court.

Quotes from Belva Lockwood:

“If nations could only depend upon fair and impartial judgments in a world court of law, they would abandon the senseless, savage practice of war.”

“I know we can’t abolish prejudice through laws, but we can set up guidelines for our actions by legislation.”

“I am, and always have been a progressive woman, and while never directly attacking the conventionalities of society, have always done, or attempted to do those things which I have considered conducive to my health, convenience or emolument.”

File:Belva Ann Lockwood - Brady-Handy.jpg“The glory of each generation is to make its own precedents.”

“I have been now fourteen years before the bar, in an almost continuous practice, and my experience has been large, often serious, and many times amusing. I have never lacked plenty of good paying work; but, while I have supported my family well, I have not grown rich. In business I have been patient, painstaking, and indefatigable. There is no class of case that comes before the court that I have not ventured to try . . . either civil, equitable, or criminal; and my clients have been as largely men as women. There is a good opening at the bar for the class of women who have taste and tact for it.”

Learn more about Belva at the National Archives or check out my book, BALLOTS FOR BELVA.