Perseverance

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.

You get to make your own luck. Eighty percent of success in your career will come from just showing up. The world is run by those who show up — not those who wait to be asked.

You get some success. You run into some walls. And it's how tenacious you are, how irrepressible, how ultimately optimistic and tenacious you are about it that will determine your success.

Anything is possible. Say it with me: Anything is possible.

It's not what happens to you. It's what you do with what happens to you.

Failure is not the opposite of success, it's an integral part of success.

We dream, we cope, and we endure. And we keep on learning.

Do not let any obstacles — personal, political, or economic — impede you. And once you've fulfilled your dreams, know that that is when you're liable to confront the greatest challenges. But so, too, may you derive the privilege of service.

Adversity is an opportunity. Adversity will make you stronger. Adversity will mold you into the person that you're meant to be.

If I could get the help I needed to get a B minus in statistics at graduate school at Harvard, there is hope for world peace.

We are all Pinocchio. We go out into the world filled with good intentions, with a vision. We are pulled this way and that. We falter. We make mistakes. But the little flame inside, no matter what we go through, will not be extinguished.

I do not wish you an easy path. Instead, I wish you a path filled with impediment and ambiguity and struggle and joy.