I had very supportive parents that made the way for me even at a time when there were very few women - no women really maybe two or three women - and very few fewer than that African-American women heading in this direction so there were very few people to look up to. You just had to have faith.

All great enterprises have a pearl of faith at their core and this must be ours: that Americans are still a people born to liberty. That they retain the capacity for self-government. That addressed as free-born autonomous men and women of God-given dignity they will rise yet again to drive back a mortal enemy.

Women have been taught that for us the earth is flat and that if we venture out we will fall off the edge. Some of us have ventured out nevertheless and so far we have not fallen off. It is my faith my feminist faith that we will not.

The first holy truth in God 101 is that men and women of true faith have always had to accept the mystery of God's identity and love and ways. I hate that but it's the truth.

Men and women of every faith and good people with none at all sincerely strive to do right and lead a purpose-driven life.

The failure of women to produce genius of the first rank in most of the supreme forms of human effort has been used to block the way of all women of talent and ambition for intellectual achievement.

In the different voice of women lies the truth of an ethic of care the tie between relationship and responsibility and the origins of aggression in the failure of connection.

The failure of women to have reached positions of leadership has been due in large part to social and professional discrimination.

As long as the G.O.P. led by its increasingly visible women continues to insist that the problem is not their policies but women's failure to understand their own lives and interests the gender gap won't go away.

Women must try to do things as men have tried. When they fail their failure must be but a challenge to others.