Jessica Mendoza Quotes

I'm among the first girls ever to play Little League baseball, and to my knowledge, the very first in western Illinois. It was 1976, and I was a nine-year-old tomboy whose older brothers had played.

When I became the first woman to represent the state of Texas in the United State Senate, it was with the help of a lot of women - and a large number of men, too.

Being the first woman speaker and breaking the marble ceiling is pretty important. Now it's time to move on.

I have to tell you, my seven-year-old granddaughter said to my daughter, her mother, 'So what's the big deal about Grandma Maddy having been Secretary of State? Only girls are Secretaries of State.' Most of her lifetime, it's true. But at the time it really was a big deal.

I was the first woman to win a Tony for directing, but the second woman came along five minutes later.

You ask how I feel to be the first female president in southern Africa? It's heavy for me. Heavy in the sense that I feel that I'm carrying this heavy load on behalf of all women.

I did some great work with my Calvin Klein ads on the motorcycle. It was really groundbreaking because people hadn't seen a woman actually riding a motorcycle before.

I never thought I was breaking a glass ceiling. I just had to do what I had to do, and it never occurred to me not to.

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.

Twenty-six years ago, I became the first Democratic woman elected to the Senate in her own right. I was the first, but I made sure I wasn't the only.

I just personally decided I was going to be the first woman fighter pilot.

I look at someone like Kathryn Bigelow, and I have so much admiration. She's playing in the boy's sandpit, and winning.

In Vermont, Governor Madeleine Kunin has given years of service to our state after becoming the state's first female governor in 1985. She is an inspiration to girls throughout Vermont and the country in allowing them to know that the opportunities they have are unlimited.

To have been the first woman premier of Victoria was not only a great opportunity but also a great chance to say to the young women of Victoria - Liberal or Labor - 'You can do it, too.'

Without Police Woman I wouldn't have had a career. The show started about the same time the women's movement was taking off. Ours was the first prime-time one-hour show featuring a strong, professional woman. It paved the way for other series to follow.

I'd like to be the first model who becomes a woman.

I was one of the first women producers in Hollywood.

Radium was discovered by Madame Curie…. In defiance of the dogma that woman is inferior, public homage was rendered to Madame Curie in awarding her with the Nobel Prize.

A woman opening a movie with no other star is like a miracle.

Marilyn Monroe Productions was the first female-owned production company in Hollywood. She paved the way for women in Hollywood, and every single woman owes something to her for that, whether they agree with her image or not.

I was one of the first women partners at my law firm, the first woman in my Minnesota prosecutor job, and the first woman elected from my state to the Senate. So advice from women who had done similar things was important for me.

When Nicki was putting out mixtapes, she was the only female rapper that had any kind of buzz. And not to mention that she was on the track with the guys, you know? So you had the girls playing it, and you had the hood guys playing it, too, so you couldn't run away from Nicki.

Do I care about what men say at the race track? No, not at all. I've always said I race for me, because I love racing. I don't race to prove a point about how well a woman can do against men on the track.

I truly believe there is this confidence gap, at least for me. You have to 'manipulate' yourself to get over it, and I do think it has something to do with being a female. If you live in fear or doubt and have that confidence gap, you are simply not going to achieve your full potential and what you know you can achieve.

I wanted to do something that nobody else was doing. I didn't have a mentor. There were no other women on the radio.