Gayle Tzemach Lemmon Quotes & Sayings

No woman in Afghanistan is in business without support from either her husband or her father or her uncle, someone. — Gayle Tzemach Lemmon

This is an opportunity for failure as much as it is one to succeed. Do not block out the voices of opposition, study them and defeat their words and prejudices through brilliant action. — Gayle Tzemach Lemmon

What I found in Kabul was a sisterhood unlike any I had seen before, marked by empathy, laughter, courage, curiosity about the world, and above all a passion for work. — Gayle Tzemach Lemmon

Giving birth to a baby does not make you an infant. — Gayle Tzemach Lemmon

We do not invest in victims, we invest in survivors. — Gayle Tzemach Lemmon

I don't often think of Donald Trump, but his daughter is very smart. She's a woman working in real estate, which is predominantly men, and she's both savvy and articulate about her business and her business acumen. — Gayle Tzemach Lemmon

In reality, Afghanistan has functioned as a nation-state for more than two centuries, and its army and bureaucracy reach back to the 19th century. — Gayle Tzemach Lemmon

No one argues with the many benefits of breastfeeding for those women who choose it. — Gayle Tzemach Lemmon

Because microfinance is so manageable in terms of the size of the loan, people have made it the cornerstone to lifting women out of poverty. — Gayle Tzemach Lemmon

The majority of Afghans do not see the Americans as foreign occupiers who must be defeated. Instead, they are hungry for the Americans to step up and help them make their country safer, their government cleaner and their economy stronger. They are disappointed because the international community has done too little, not too much. — Gayle Tzemach Lemmon

In Nigeria, along with its West African neighbor Ghana, women are now starting businesses in greater numbers than men. — Gayle Tzemach Lemmon

My mother never asked me whether I wanted to go to college, but told me I was going - to the University of Maryland on an academic scholarship. — Gayle Tzemach Lemmon

The United States will not be in Afghanistan forever. — Gayle Tzemach Lemmon

In Afghanistan, life is so fragile; who knows what the next week will bring? That fragility really affects the way you're able to report, and the kind of stories people will tell you. — Gayle Tzemach Lemmon

I think entrepreneurs are born and not created, and so I think you see a lot of similarities among entrepreneurs in different parts of the world. Their backdrop may be very different, but their drive to create a business and to create jobs remains very much the same, whether it's in Silicon Valley or Kandahar or Kabul. — Gayle Tzemach Lemmon

Be amazing, because you are. — Gayle Tzemach Lemmon

The military alone cannot end the conflict in Afghanistan. On that much nearly everyone can agree, offering a rare island of consensus among sides otherwise divided on the question of how and when America's longest-ever war should wind down. — Gayle Tzemach Lemmon

The lessons I learned from my mother and her friends have guided me through death, birth, loss, love, failure, and achievement, on to a Fulbright scholarship and Harvard Business School. They taught me to believe that anything was possible. They have proven to be the strongest family values I could ever have imagined. — Gayle Tzemach Lemmon

Certainly Afghans in general and women in particular want a country in which security is a daily reality rather than a campaign slogan or the focus of drive-by speeches from diplomats dropping in for the day. — Gayle Tzemach Lemmon

I think for larger-scale entrepreneurship, it's true - for men and women - that people who already have capital tend to do better. — Gayle Tzemach Lemmon

My mother worked at the telephone company during the day and sold Tupperware at night. Evenings, she took classes when she could at University of Maryland's University College, bringing me along to do homework while she studied to get the degree she hoped would offer her and me greater opportunities. — Gayle Tzemach Lemmon

Women in Afghanistan do not ask the United States to stay for the simple or sentimental reason of safeguarding their rights. They are the first ones to say that this is not enough of a reason for the world's remaining superpower to remain in their country. — Gayle Tzemach Lemmon

In Tunisia, where women have long enjoyed greater rights than many of their Arab neighbors, women pushed for and won a new electoral code that guarantees women will make up half of a candidates' list for office. — Gayle Tzemach Lemmon

This is why they don't want women here. These guys spend years getting trained to become Green Berets, they test themselves physically, mentally, and every place in between, and someone thinks that a couple weeks of training is any kind of equivalent - that we deserve anything close to the accolades that these guys get? We are no better than fresh-off-the-boat privates right now. No way in hell we are even close to what they do." And — Gayle Tzemach Lemmon

If you're talking about entrepreneurs in conflict and post-conflict settings, then you must talk about women, because they are the population you have left. — Gayle Tzemach Lemmon

It matters whether women sit at the table. No one speaks up for you when you are standing outside with your nose pressed up against the glass. You cannot window-shop for power. — Gayle Tzemach Lemmon

The one thing you learn from looking at places like Afghanistan is that the power of business to do good is enormous. — Gayle Tzemach Lemmon

It is much better to earn a living with a pen than with power, — Gayle Tzemach Lemmon

Educating girls just one year beyond the average fourth grade education increases their eventual earnings by 10 to 20 percent. Every additional year of secondary education can increase future wages by 15 to 25 percent. — Gayle Tzemach Lemmon

Amber wanted to see special operations open to women and she believed they all should have a shot at going to Ranger School but only if there were no shortcuts, no dumbing down of any of the requirements, the same standards for everyone. And everyone would have the chance to meet them. T — Gayle Tzemach Lemmon

Don't tell people what you're going to do, or what kind of person you are. Just show them. — Gayle Tzemach Lemmon

We are so used to seeing women as victims of war to be pitied rather than survivors of war to be respected. — Gayle Tzemach Lemmon

wanted to know what war was like for those who had been left behind: the women who managed to keep going even as their world fell apart. — Gayle Tzemach Lemmon

I brought my daughter today because I wanted her to know what a hero was," the woman said, holding the hand of a little girl. "And I wanted her to know girls could be heroes, too. — Gayle Tzemach Lemmon

A social entrepreneur finds market-based solutions for change. Because without a market-based solution, without a sustainable solution, you go nowhere. — Gayle Tzemach Lemmon

Brave young women complete heroic acts everyday, with no one bearing witness. This was a chance to even the ledger, to share one small story the made the difference between starvation and survival for the families whose lives it changed. I wanted to pull the curtain back for readers on a place foreigners know more for its rocket attacks and roadside bombs than its countless quiet feats of courage. And to introduce them to the young women like Kamila Sidiqi who will go on. No matter what. — Gayle Tzemach Lemmon

Microfinance does not require previous experience or loans to the same extent as a small-business loan, so it's easier for women to enter the micro sector. — Gayle Tzemach Lemmon

Numerically speaking, half the population cannot be a minority. Yet when it comes to women, the numbers plainly show that the mathematically impossible is the socially acceptable. — Gayle Tzemach Lemmon

Entrepreneurship isn't for everyone, and not everyone is going to be an entrepreneur, but women who turn to business, turn to economics, because there are people depending on them, I think that their creativity, their resilience, their spirit, embody what's best about entrepreneurship. — Gayle Tzemach Lemmon

I'm a really bad driver. When I'm in L.A. my husband always has to park the car for me, because I'm likely to hit something. — Gayle Tzemach Lemmon

Microfinance is an incredibly powerful tool ... but we must move beyond micro-hopes and micro-ambitions for women. — Gayle Tzemach Lemmon

It is high time to declare an end to the breastfeeding dictatorship that is drowning women in guilt and worry just when they most need support: after the birth of a child. — Gayle Tzemach Lemmon

The draconian prohibitions of the Taliban years and the gains Afghan women have achieved since the Taliban government was overthrown in 2001 are now well known and often cited: Today, Afghans lucky enough to live in secure regions can go to school, women may work in offices, and the burqa is no longer mandatory. — Gayle Tzemach Lemmon

The mission has not yet run its course. Don't limit your actions in pursuit of success. Take a measured course and a wide berth within your lines of operation. Show us all what you are capable of. — Gayle Tzemach Lemmon

Single mothers are raising more of America's children than ever before. — Gayle Tzemach Lemmon

What I learned at journalism school and at ABC - those skills are the same no matter where you are in the world. — Gayle Tzemach Lemmon

I think that sometimes people are frightened to take the risk of entrepreneurship. — Gayle Tzemach Lemmon

The women of Afghanistan have a voice, and it needs to be heard and not forgotten. — Gayle Tzemach Lemmon

Educated mothers are 50 percent more likely to immunize their children than mothers with no schooling. — Gayle Tzemach Lemmon

She (Kamila Sidiqi) believes strongly that Afghans can shape their own future using business to create a healthy economy that offers opportunity and a chance at a better and more peaceful tomorrow."
~in other words capitalism!(my words) — Gayle Tzemach Lemmon

A lot has been said about single mothers. Most of it has been less than flattering. — Gayle Tzemach Lemmon

When the Taliban captured Kabul in 1996 after a searing, four-year civil war, they immediately instituted laws which fit their utopic vision of the time of Islam's founding more than 1,300 years earlier. Afghan women's lives offered the most visible sign of the imagined past to which Afghanistan's present was to be returned. — Gayle Tzemach Lemmon

War reporters are often seen as a wild bunch of thrill-seekers who wade into danger zones simply for the sake of the adrenalin high the settings inevitably provide. But this one-dimensional explanation leaves out the core of the story, which is that reporters go to these places because they feel the tug of responsibility. — Gayle Tzemach Lemmon

This was a mental game as much as a physical challenge, designed to reinforce the fact that staying focused and motivated is absolutely critical to mission success and basic survival in war. — Gayle Tzemach Lemmon

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. — Gayle Tzemach Lemmon

Women who choose to breastfeed should get as much education and support as possible. — Gayle Tzemach Lemmon

Not one country in all the world has eliminated its economic participation [gender] gap - not one. — Gayle Tzemach Lemmon