151 Quotes by Kirsten Gillibrand

It truly disturbs me how little some leaders care. Few lobby for food stamps, because the people who need them aren't in positions of power. The logic is sad and twisted.

Work and family are both basic tenets of our society. Every government should celebrate and protect both for all of its citizens. That we have come to a place where women seeking work and family can be seen as overreaching, even selfish, is inane.

The world may be vast and slow to turn, but we will get where we need to go if we're kind and caring to one another, one small act at a time.

If women in all stages of life don't get involved and fight for what we want, plans will be made that we may not like, and it'll be our own damned fault. I think about this everyday. It's true at every level, from the Capitol to your city's town hall to your neighborhood school. We need to participate, and we need to be heard. Our lives, our communities, and our world will be better for it.

Ultimately, our tangled views of ambition come down to word choice. Just as many women reject the word 'feminist' but believe in opportunity and equality for all, many women reject the word 'ambition' but believe in trying to achieve difficult goals.

Supporting women is not just good for women. It's good for everybody. When you look at the economy as a whole, the companies with the greatest number of women on their boards outperform the companies with the fewest. The number of women on a board correlates positively with social responsibility and reputation. The more women, the better the corporate governance.

Our economic policies are undermining our future. The promise of the American dream was that if you worked hard, you could make it into the middle class. If we don't raise the minimum wage, provide affordable daycare and universal pre-K, and mandate paid family medical leave and equal pay for equal work, we are allowing that dream to fade away.

Those last six words—'for a time such as this'—resonate with me to my core. I believe that in certain situations, we each have a moral responsibility to act. We all have unique opportunities that derive from our unique circumstances, and we have a duty to take them.

Hillary and her peers made securing women's rights the fight of their lives. My generation has a responsibility to take the power and freedom they fought for and make the world a better, safer place.