Leymah Gbowee Quotes & Sayings
Enjoy the top 34 famous quotes, sayings and quotations by Leymah Gbowee.
Famous Quotes By Leymah Gbowee
We have lived through fear all our lives, and when you have gone through a whole lot of fear, sometimes all you can do is resist the fear, and resistance comes in the form of courage. — Leymah Gbowee
I have come to one conclusion: All that I am, all that I aspire to be, all that I was before, is by the grace of God. There are so many women in Africa, and outside Africa, who are more intelligent than I am. — Leymah Gbowee
I don't feel like I've done anything extraordinary but take my little light and shine it in darkness. — Leymah Gbowee
Don't wait for a Gandhi, don't wait for a King, don't wait for a Mandela. You are your own Mandela, you are your own Gandhi, you are your own King. — Leymah Gbowee
If you are serving justice to one person, those who have been affected should also be served some form of justice. — Leymah Gbowee
We must continue to unite in sisterhood to turn our tears into triumph. There is no time to rest until our world achieves wholeness and balance, where all men and women are considered equal and free. — Leymah Gbowee
The world is upside down, it's going to take a lot of hands to turn it right side up. — Leymah Gbowee
Most of the institutions that come in to offer help after disaster don't have the resources to provide concrete help. . . . Donor communities invest billions funding peace talks and disarmament. Then they stop. The most important part of postwar help is missing: providing basic social services to people. Not having those resources might have been a reason men went to war in the first place; they crossed a border and joined an armed group because they didn't have jobs. In Liberia right now, there are hundreds of thousands of unemployed young people, and they're ready-made mercenaries for wars in West Africa. You'd think the international community would be sensible enough to know they should work to change this. But they aren't. — Leymah Gbowee
It's insulting when outsiders come in and tell a traumatized people what it will take for them to heal ... People who have lived through a terrible conflict may be hungry and desperate, but they are not stupid. They often have very good ideas about how peace can evolve, and they need to be asked. That includes women. Most especially women. — Leymah Gbowee
'I wish for a better life. I wish for food for my children. I wish that sexual abuse and exploitation in schools would stop.' This is the dream of the African girl. — Leymah Gbowee
You can't cure trauma when violence is ongoing, so the primary effort must be working for peace. You can't negotiate a lasting peace without bringing women into the effort, but women can't become peacemakers without releasing the pain that keeps them from feeling their own strength. — Leymah Gbowee
There is something in this world that every individual can do. God has created all of us with something unique to contribute. — Leymah Gbowee
Sometimes, people call my way of speaking ranting. Why are you always ranting and screaming, they ask. But here's the thing ... the reason why I rant is because I am a voice for many women that cannot speak out to heads of state, UN officials, and those that influence systems of oppression. And so I rant. And I will not stop ranting until my mission of equality of all girls is achieved. — Leymah Gbowee
At 17, the first time I saw a dead body, I froze. By 31 it was a natural occurrence for me, and no group of people should live like that. — Leymah Gbowee
Don't stop, echoes the older Liberian lady's voice. Don't ever stop.
My answer to her: I never will. — Leymah Gbowee
When you're depressed, you get trapped inside yourself and lose the energy to take the actions that might make you feel better. You hate yourself for that. You see the suffering of others but feel incapable of helping them, and that makes you hate yourself, too. The hate makes you sadder, the sadness makes you more helpless, the helplessness fills you with more self-hate... Working . . . broke that cycle for me. I wasn't sitting home thinking endlessly about what a failure I was; I was doing something, something that actually helped people. The more I did, the more I could do, the more I wanted to do, the more I saw needed to be done. — Leymah Gbowee
The one thing I have never been afraid of is standing before important people and speaking my mind. I represent women who may never have the opportunity to go to the UN or meet with a president. I'm never afraid to speak truth to power. — Leymah Gbowee
I'm now on a journey to fulfill the wish, in my tiny capacity, of little African girls. — Leymah Gbowee
When you move so quickly from innocence to a world of fear, pain and loss, it's as if the flesh of your heart and mind gets cut away, piece by piece, like slices taken off a ham. Finally, there is nothing left but bone. — Leymah Gbowee
You can tell people of the need to struggle, but when the powerless start to see that they really can make a difference, nothing can quench the fire. — Leymah Gbowee
You cannot say you've achieved equality until EVERYONE is equal and has equal opportunities! — Leymah Gbowee
Regardless of whom you pray to, during war our experiences as a community and as mothers are the same. — Leymah Gbowee
Activism is something that no one can fake. You get angry. You cry. But you never throw in your towel, because that anger is what is propelling you to further action. — Leymah Gbowee
Leadership is standing with your people. People say you have to live to fight another day, but sometimes you have to show you are a true leader. — Leymah Gbowee
Women are the ones that bear the greatest burden. We are also the ones who nurture societies. — Leymah Gbowee
When the guilty verdict was handed down, I walked outside and saw a rainbow encircling the sun. Everyone in Monrovia could see it. It was a hot day, 80 or 90 degrees. I don't remember seeing any raindrops fall. I thought, this is a sign. — Leymah Gbowee
I'm a serious optimist. I come from a country where you have little to be hopeful for, and so you have to always be an optimist. — Leymah Gbowee
If any changes were to be made in society it had to be by the mothers. — Leymah Gbowee
I always tell people, anger is like liquid. It's fluid, it's like water. You put it in a container and it takes the shape of that container. So many people you see in prison, unleashing war on their people, they are angry, and they take their anger and put it into a violent container. — Leymah Gbowee
Organizations like the UN do a lot of good, but there are certain basic realities they never seem to grasp ... Maybe the most important truth that eludes these organizations is that it's insulting when outsiders come in and tell a traumatized people what it will take for them to heal.
You cannot go to another country and make a plan for it. The cultural context is so different from what you know that you will not understand much of what you see. I would never come to the US and claim to understand what's going on, even in the African American culture. People who have lived through a terrible conflict may be hungry and desperate, but they are not stupid. They often have very good ideas about how peace can evolve, and they need to be asked.
That includes women. Most especially women ...
To outsiders like the UN, these soldiers were a problem to be managed. But they were our children. — Leymah Gbowee
We go into rural communities, and all we do - like has been done in this room [at TED] - is create the space. When these girls sit ... you unlock great leaders. — Leymah Gbowee
The person who hurt you
who raped you or killed your family
is also here. If you are still angry at that person, if you haven't been able to forgive, you are chained to him. Everyone could feel the emotional truth of that: When someone offends you and you haven't let go, every time you see him, you grow breathless or your heart skips a beat. If the trauma was really severe, you dream of revenge. Above you, is the Mountain of Peace and Prosperity where we all want to go. But when you try to climb that hill, the person you haven't forgiven weighs you down. It's a personal choice whether or not to let go. No one can tell you how long to mourn a death or rage over a rape. But you can't move forward until you break that chain. — Leymah Gbowee