Joschka Fischer Quotes

I come from a broken home. My parents split up when I was nine. Everyone gave me a good wallop. But I come from a time when you just put up with that, you got on with things rather than sitting moaning about them.

A lot of children can go back and look at their childhood and find reasons why it wasn't perfect. But why whine about something no one can fix? You deal with it.

I was raised by a single black deaf woman, so I am as independent as they come.

Most of my younger Native American friends are not in any way looking for sympathy, and they're not looking to lay guilt on anybody. They have their dignity, and they do what they do.

With my father and sister being very depressed for most of their lives, it was incumbent on me to try to make them laugh, in this ridiculous way. They were the wittiest people I knew, but to get a smile from them was like winning the lottery.

The only way I see the world now is through coming out of and growing up and living in Somalia. In the time of war, everyone was basically trying to live and manage the best they could. But you also had another period which was not a hard time at all - it was just a beautiful time. I lived in both eras.

I am the daughter of Nigerian immigrants. My mother is a survivor of both polio and of the Igbo genocide during her country's civil war in the late 1960s.

My entire youth was spent with an incredibly ill parent... I don't think you can grow up that way and not be marked by that experience.

And maybe that's being the third child, although my entire family are very resilient - very, very resilient.

I grew up in an immigrant neighborhood. We just knew the rule was you're going to have to work twice as hard.

It's such a big deal, the notion that these enslaved Africans had marriages and children... because therein lies our humanity, our capacity for love.

There are so many kids in this country growing up in poverty, facing very, very hard challenges... We need resilience for all of them.

I think so much of my life had me growing up under extreme poverty and really challenging conditions, with having the police in my neighborhood and seeing the impact of over-incarceration. Having a father love up on me and remind of who I was, and my strength against those conditions, really shaped why I'm an organizer today.

I was lucky I had a mom who had seen it all. From seeing my grandfather march in the Civil Rights era, she understood the depth, character, and stability you need to go through racism. She taught me not to accept it to but deal with it and be better than it.

I went through pain as a child so my children wouldn't have to.

I grew up in a household with my mother, who was a Holocaust survivor. I very much understand the mentality that you cannot live in the past. You can't spend your entire life, or even portions of it, looking back and dwelling on things that have already happened. You have to move forward.

Anyone who has lived in an area with high unemployment knows how it erodes social bonds, lowers the resilience of the unemployed and their families, and damages the prospects of the next generation.

The threat from the far right is as corrosive as the twisted Islamist ideologies so many Muslims have spoken out against.

I had a difficult relationship with my parents, who died young, but they instilled self-discipline and a sense of honour and loyalty and accountability. I'm grateful for that.

How children attempt to deal with everyday comedies and tragedies, and mortality, is universal and ultimately such a large part of what it means to be human.

In spite of our agonizing history, Native American people find much to celebrate. The songs, the dances, the culture and traditions surrounding planting and harvests, the prayers that are sent upward for healing and peace, and the welcoming of children into our families, are all reasons for us to keep moving forward with optimism.

My mom and dad both worked when I was little... My mom, her mom died when she was 11, so she had a rough childhood as well. She put herself through college in three years at the University of Texas - while working a job to pay for it.

Black, poor, without a father most of my life, one of 10 children - it was actually pretty amazing I had made it to the age of 29 without a noose around my neck.

The Republican Party would have the American flag and the swastika flying side by side.

America needs to follow the policies it has introduced in Germany. We have to go through a certain de-Nazification process.