Ellen Johnson Sirleaf Quotes

My life was safeguarded when thousands mobilized around the world to free me from imprisonment, and my life was spared by individual acts of compassion by some of my captors.

Technology has turned our world into one interconnected neighborhood. What happens in one place is seen in every corner, and there has been no better time for the spread of peace, democracy and their attending social justice and fairness for all.

"I don't face any particular problems as a woman president because I have been a professional for a long time. I keep telling people: I am a technocrat who happens to be a woman."

My journey was supported by my many teachers and mentors who guided me to a world opened up by the enlightenment of higher education, and which led to my conviction that access to quality education is the social justice issue of our time.

" True reconciliation is not just about forgiving, but also about building a future together".

Through the mutilation of our bodies and the destruction of our ambitions, women and girls have disproportionately paid the price of domestic and international armed conflict. We have paid in the currencies of blood, of tears, and of dignity.

If I might thus speak to girls and women everywhere, I would issue them this simple invitation: My sisters, my daughters, my friends, find your voices!

If your dreams do not scare you, they are not big enough.

Mine has been a long journey, a lifetime journey to Oslo. It was shaped by the values of my parents and by my two grandmothers – indigenous Liberians, farmers and market traders – neither of whom could read or write. They taught me that only through service is one’s life truly blessed.

It was exactly 63 years ago today that the United Nations General Assembly adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. That document, the legacy of a generation that had just emerged from the horrors of a devastating World War, remains of great significance to us today. It is a Declaration that is universal. It speaks of rights that all humans have simply by virtue of being human. These rights are not given to us by governments, which might revoke them at their pleasure. It is a Declaration that is legal, not a list of benevolent aspirations. It obligates States, even in their treatment of their own citizens, to observe, and to uphold, those universal rights and freedoms that belong to us all.

However, the need to defend the rights of women is not limited to the battlefield, and the threats to those rights do not emanate only from armed violence. Girls’ education, seen far too often as an unnecessary indulgence rather than the key investment it is, is still under-funded and under-staffed. Too often girls are discouraged from pursuing an academic training, no matter how promising they may be.

The size of your dreams must always exceed your current capacity to achieve them. If your dreams do not scare you, they are not big enough.”

To girls and women everywhere, I issue a simple invitation. My sisters, my daughters, my friends; find your voice.

"Of course, I am the first democratically elected woman president in Africa, and that raises a lot of expectations. Because I represent the aspirations of women all over Africa, I must succeed for them. I must keep the door open for women's participation in politics at the highest level. That is both humbling and exciting."

Ethnicity should enrich us; it should make us a unique people in our diversity and not be used to divide us.