Legacy

Education is still the key to real and lasting freedom — it is still true today. So it is now up to us to cultivate that hunger for education in our own lives and in those around us.

She was not a white man. So Clara rewrote the law that governed the practice of law in California, replacing 'white man' with 'any citizen or person resident of this state.'

The effect you have on others is the most valuable currency there is. Everything you gain in life will rot and fall apart, and all that will be left of you is what was in your heart.

I know that when I am on my deathbed someday, I will not be thinking about any particular legislation I passed; I will not be thinking about a policy I promoted; I will not be thinking about the Nobel Prize I received. I will be thinking about that walk I took with my daughters.

Remember the Holland in your life. When you've ascended these great heights and done these great things, go back and find that person and say, 'I've come a long way in life and I just wanted to tell you that you had something to do with that.'

Your life will not be defined by the society that we have left you. Every generation must define itself, and so make the world that suits itself.

Be proud of this new generation. They aren't like you, but they are what America now needs.

No one knows what challenges this Millennial Generation may eventually be asked to bear. Hardly anyone expects them to become America's next greatest generation. But someday you can say you heard it from me: that is their destiny.

I think the importance of doing activist work is precisely because it allows you to give back and to consider yourself not as a single individual who may have achieved whatever, but to be part of an ongoing historical movement.

These international students are our true hope. They will become our ambassadors of change, the ambassadors of democratic freedoms and the rights for higher education, and they will become our future leaders.

That is the story of Spelman College — that unyielding presumption of promise, that presumption of brilliance, that presumption that every woman who enrolls at this school has something infinitely valuable to offer this world. And ladies, that is now your story. That legacy is now your inheritance.

Every defeat to me was a challenge. And for six generations, that is what Spelman women have done. They have seen every defeat as a challenge.