When you strengthen women, you strengthen the world.

When men talk about war, the stories and terminology vary - it's this battle, these weapons, this terrain. But no matter where you go in the world, women use the same language to speak of war. They speak of fire, they speak of death, and they speak of starvation.

The hardest thing in the world, I now know, is to hold in your head that it is okay to think that you are right, but not to think so necessarily because everyone who disagrees with you is wrong or stupid or duped or bad.

I've heard people say in the U.N. community among mediators they don't like women as mediators because they're too quick to compromise.

I think if we understand better the impact of war on women and children, we might be more careful about the wars we start.

We have a world minus a whole lot of talent that has stepped out of contention for leadership, only because they don't want to seem too aggressive, too smart, unattractive, or too male.