Top 75 Wilma Quotes
#1. The state team is committed to working with our federal partners in meeting the needs of Floridians who were affected by Hurricane Wilma. We want to be as thorough as possible in this vital endeavor.
Craig Fugate
#2. In our weeks of talk, movies and friendship, I watched as Wilma turned a medical ordeal into one more event in her life, but not its definition. I believe she was teaching me an intimate form of The Way. In her words: Every day is a good day - because we are part of everything alive.
Gloria Steinem
#3. For me, those weeks in Boston, with Wilma, became a lesson in her ability to be "of good mind," in her phrase, which also meant a people's ability to survive.
Gloria Steinem
#4. It is tempting to ascribe Katrina, Rita and now Wilma to global warming effects, but I am not sure that would pass statistical muster.
Kerry Emanuel
#5. She's strong," he told his mom. "She'll be fine."
"Even strong people need help." Wilma said it with soft but firm tones that he couldn't argue with.
Brenda Minton
#6. The cabbage white flies through the tailor's cheek. The tailor sinks his head. The cabbage white flies out of the back of the tailor's head, white and uncrumpled. Skinny Wilma flaps her handkerchief. The cabbage white flies through her forehead and into her head.
Herta Muller
#7. My ability to survive personal crises is really a mark of the character of my people. Individually and collectively, we must react with a tenacity that allows us again and again to bounce back from adversity.
Wilma Mankiller
#8. I had a series of childhood illnesses ... scarlet fever ... pneumonia ... Polio. I walked with braces until I was at least nine years old. My life wasn't like the average person who grew up and decided to enter the world of sports.
Wilma Rudolph
#9. I tell them that the most important aspect is to be yourself and have confidence in yourself.
Wilma Rudolph
#10. We must trust our own thinking. Trust where we're going. And get the job done.
Wilma Mankiller
#11. I believe in me more than anything in this world.
Wilma Rudolph
#12. I don't think anybody anywhere can talk about the future of their people or of an organization without talking about education. Whoever controls the education of our children controls our future.
Wilma Mankiller
#13. I've run into more discrimination as a woman than as an Indian.
Wilma Mankiller
#14. When the sun is shining I can do anything; no mountain is too high, no trouble too difficult to overcome.
Wilma Rudolph
#15. We will no longer be led only by that half of the population whose socialization, through toys, games, values and expectations, sanctions violence as the final assertion of manhood, synonymous with nationhood.
Wilma Scott Heide
#16. I hope many of you will be people that question why things are and why we have to do them the way we have always done them. I hope you will take some risks, exert some real leadership on issues, and if you will, dance along the edge of the roof as you continue for life.
Wilma Mankiller
#17. In a moment I might be under the wave swallowing seawater and small jellyfish, but right now I am an ancient princess of Hawaii, I am a bikini model, I am a goddess before the crest of a monster billow.
Wilma Johnson
#18. By the time I was 12 I was challenging every boy in our neighborhood at running, jumping, everything.
Wilma Rudolph
#19. The pedestal is immobilizing and subtly insulting whether or not some women yet realize it. We must move up from the pedestal.
Wilma Scott Heide
#20. In Iroquois society, leaders are encouraged to remember seven generations in the past and consider seven generations in the future when making decisions that affect the people.
Wilma Mankiller
#21. America would be a better place if leaders would do more long-term thinking.
Wilma Mankiller
#22. We celebrate Thanksgiving along with the rest of America, maybe in different ways and for different reasons. Despite everything that's happened to us since we fed the Pilgrims, we still have our language, our culture, our distinct social system. Even in a nuclear age, we still have a tribal people.
Wilma Mankiller
#24. Remember that I am just a woman who is living a very abundant life. Every step I take forward is on a path paved by strong Indian women before me.
Wilma Mankiller
#25. When I was going through my transition of being famous, I tried to ask God, why was I here? What was my purpose? Surely, it wasn't just to win three gold medals. There has to be more to this life than that.
Wilma Rudolph
#26. I would be disappointed if I were remembered as a runner because I feelthat my contribution to the youth of America has far exceeded the woman who was the Olympic champion.
Wilma Rudolph
#28. Individually and collectively, Cherokee people possess an extraordinary ability to face down adversity and continue moving forward.
Wilma Mankiller
#30. The secret of our success is that we never, never give up.
Wilma Mankiller
#31. But when you come from a large, wonderful family, there's always a way to achieve your goals.
Wilma Rudolph
#32. Winning is great, sure, but if you are really going to do something in life, the secret is learning how to lose. Nobody goes undefeated all the time. If you can pick up after a crushing defeat, and go on to win again, you are going to be a champion someday.
Wilma Rudolph
#33. Friends describe me as someone who likes to sing and dance along the edge of the roof. I try to encourage young women to be willing to take risks, to stand up for the things they believe in, and to step up and accept the challenge of serving in leadership roles.
Wilma Mankiller
#35. I want to be remembered as the person who helped us restore faith in ourselves.
Wilma Mankiller
#36. People say that crisis changes people and turns ordinary people into wiser or more responsible ones.
Wilma Mankiller
#37. I had to let go of my need to know everything before I moved ahead; I had to learn to function in the mystery.
Wilma Derksen
#38. If you argue with a fool, someone passing by will not be able to tell who is the fool and who is not.
Wilma Mankiller
#39. Believe me, the reward is not so great without the struggle.
Wilma Rudolph
#40. Every social trait labelled masculine or feminine is in truth a human trait. It is our human right to develop and contribute our talents whatever our race, sex, religion, ancestry, age. Human rights are indivisible!
Wilma Scott Heide
#41. One of the things my parents taught me, and I'll always be grateful as a gift, is to not ever let anybody else define me; that for me to define myself ... and I think that helped me a lot in assuming a leadership position.
Wilma Mankiller
#42. No matter what great things you accomplish, somebody helps you.
Wilma Rudolph
#43. Whoever controls the education of our children controls the future.
Wilma Mankiller
#44. There are a whole lot of historical factors that have played a part in our being where we are today, and I think that to even to begin to understand our contemporary issues and contemporary problems, you have to understand a little bit about that history.
Wilma Mankiller
#45. I learned a long time ago that I can't control the challenges the creator sends my way, but I can control the way I think about them and deal with them
Wilma Mankiller
#47. Negative thoughts were treated by Cherokee healers with the same medicines as wounds, headaches, or physical illness. It was believed that unchecked negative thoughts can permeate the being and manifest themselves in negative actions.
Wilma Mankiller
#48. I ran and ran and ran every day, and I acquired this sense of determination, this sense of spirit that I would never, never give up, no matter what else happened.
Wilma Rudolph
#49. Prior to my election, young Cherokee girls would never have thought that they might grow up and become chief.
Wilma Mankiller
#50. Black women ... work because their husbands can't make enough money at their jobs to keep everything going ... They don't go to work to find fulfillment, or adventure, or glamour and romance, like so many white women think they are doing. Black women work out of necessity.
Wilma Rudolph
#51. Never underestimate the power of dreams and the influence of the human spirit. We are all the same in this notion: The potential for greatness lives within each of us.
Wilma Rudolph
#52. I don't consciously try to be a role model, so I don't know if I am or not. That's for other people to decide.
Wilma Rudolph
#53. I think the most important issue we have as a people is what we started, and that is to begin to trust our own thinking again and belive in ourselves enough to think that we can articulate our own vision of the future and then work to make sure that that vision becomes a reality.
Wilma Mankiller
#54. A lot of young girls have looked to their career paths and have said they'd like to be chief. There's been a change in the limits people see.
Wilma Mankiller
#55. I do not refer to myself as a 'housewife' for the reason that I did not marry a house.
Wilma Scott Heide
#57. Women in leadership roles can help restore balance and wholeness to our communities.
Wilma Mankiller
#58. Look forward. Turn what has been done into a better path.
Wilma Mankiller
#59. I loved the feeling of freedom in running, the fresh air, the feeling that the only person I'm competing with is me.
Wilma Rudolph
#60. What do you do after you are world-famous and nineteen or twenty and you have sat with prime ministers, kings and queens, the Pope? Do you go back home and take a job? What do you do to keep your sanity? You come back to the real world.
Wilma Rudolph
#61. I'm in my prime. There's no goal too far, no mountain too high.
Wilma Rudolph
#62. My doctor told me I would never walk again. My mother told me I would. I believed my mother.
Wilma Rudolph
#63. Every single person has leadership ability. Some step up and take them. Some don't. My answer was to step up and lead.
Wilma Mankiller
#64. Take care how you place your moccasins upon the Earth, step with care, for the faces of the future generations are looking up from the Earth waiting their turn for life.
Wilma Mankiller
#65. My mother taught me very early to believe I could achieve any accomplishment I wanted to. The first was to walk without braces.
Wilma Rudolph
#66. Everybody is sitting around saying, 'Well, jeez, we need somebody to solve this problem of bias.' That somebody is us. We all have to try to figure out a better way to get along.
Wilma Mankiller
#67. I thought I'd never get to see that. Florence Griffith Joyner
every time she ran, I ran.
Wilma Rudolph
#68. An Indian is an Indian regardless of the degree of Indian blood or which little government card they do or do not possess.
Wilma Mankiller
#69. Sometimes it takes years to really grasp what has happened to your life.
Wilma Rudolph
#70. Unless women have, from the moment of birth, socialization for, expectations of, and preparation for a viable significant alternative to motherhood ... women will continue to want and reproduce too many children.
Wilma Scott Heide
#71. I knew that whatever I set my mind to do. I could do.
Wilma Rudolph
#72. Winning is great but if you are really going to do something in life, the secret is learning how to lose.
Wilma Rudolph
#74. It doesn't matter what you're trying to accomplish. It's all a matter of discipline. I was determined to discover what life held for me beyond the inner-city streets.
Wilma Rudolph
#75. The feeling of accomplishment welled up inside of me, three Olympic gold medals. I knew that was something nobody could ever take away from me, ever.
Wilma Rudolph
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