Justice

Part of "rape culture" means that we have a kind of Pavlovian response to when we hear a rape occurred…Not only do we have like this kind of knee-jerk response to blame to victim, but that we actually have a very sophisticated profile of what a victim looks like and why she needs to be blamed. So that there's no thinking - no thought process - about the perpetrator in this case. "What was he doing at one in the morning? Why was he at a place where there was alcohol?

The ongoing war in Afghanistan is being imposed on us, and Afghans are being sacrificed in it for someone else's interests. We are not blocking the interests of the United States or other major powers. But we are demanding that if you consider Afghanistan the place from which to advance your interests, then you should also pay attention to Afghanistan’s interests.

This country has a marvelous way of including more and more people in every generation.

We are human beings, and this is the part of our human nature, that we don’t learn the importance of anything until it’s snatched from our hands. And when, in Pakistan, when we were stopped from going to school, at that time I realized that education is very important. And education is the power for women. And that’s why the terrorists are afraid of education. They do not want women to get education, because then women would become more powerful.

You know, my father was a great encouragement for me, because he spoke out for women’s rights, he spoke out for girls’ education. And at that time I said that ‘Why should I wait for someone else? Why should I be looking to the government? To the army, that they would help us? Why don’t I raise I my voice? Why don’t we speak out for our rights?’

Three of the last four [elections], ’06, ’08, and ’12, were disastrous for Republicans. And they were years in which we just we stayed quiet, we went along the get-along, we didn’t stand on principle. The only year that was a good year for Republicans was 2010, when we painted in bold colors, not in pale pastels. We stood for principle. I think winning this fight right now is the most important thing we can do to see significant victories in 2014.

If world problems feel too big to tackle, think small. Step by step. Small wins build confidence, lead the way to change.

It takes courage to speak up against complacency and injustice while others remain silent. But that's what leadership is.

And, as a consequence of the pressure that we've applied over the last couple of weeks, we have Syria -- for the first time -- acknowledging that it has chemical weapons, agreeing to join the convention that prohibits the use of chemical weapons, and the Russians -- their primary sponsors -- saying that they will push Syria to get all of their chemical weapons out. The distance that we've traveled over these couple of weeks is remarkable.

Putin stepped in, but he didn’t step in to save Barack Obama. Putin stepped in to maximize Russian influence in the Middle East. That is, strategically, a defeat for the United States.

So there’s this profound mythology around whistleblowers which says, first of all, they’re all crazy. But what I’ve found going around the world and talking to whistleblowers is actually they’re very loyal and, quite often, very conservative people. They’re hugely dedicated to the institutions that they work for. And the reason that they speak up, the reason they insist on seeing, is because they care so much about the institution and want to keep it healthy.

A lot of people criticized me for speaking out, not long ago, about gay marriage. I could not remain silent any longer. It’s the civil rights of our day. It’s the issue of our day.