Zainab Salbi Quotations

The single thing all women need in the world is inspiration, and inspiration comes from storytelling.

Sometimes you just have to jump off the cliff without knowing where you will land.

Being a leader for me is about having the courage to speak the truth, and live the truth, despite attempts to silence our thoughts, feelings, and past experiences.

No change can come if those who are impacted the most by discrimination are not willing to stand up for themselves.

Every woman must own her story; otherwise we are all part of the silence.

I by no means intend to simplify the challenges women face in any culture. Women are marginalized in all cultures in my opinion, some in more extreme ways than others.

Like life, peace begins with women. We are the first to forge lines of alliance and collaboration across conflict divides.

I don't have a child, so Women for Women is like my child. But I always said I would step down after 20 years. I didn't want to be a 60-year-old woman holding on to something I created when I was 23.

Leadership is about encouraging women to break their silence and tell their stories to the world.

Do you know that people fall in love in war and go to school and go to factories and hospitals and get divorced and go dancing and go playing and live life?

I don't want to be someone in my sixties holding on to a group that I created when I was in my twenties.

While women may look different, as some wear suits and others wear saris, or some cover their hair while others wear their hair loose, women need to stand together because they all face the central point of discrimination, although the extremity of which may be different from Kigali to Kabul.

I grew up with injustice and could do nothing about it. But once in America, I had freedom of choice.

There is never a typical week. I don't think I can live with a typical week.

I couldn't find anyone doing something about the astounding injustices women were experiencing, so I decided to do something myself. I cannot tell you how many people ridiculed my efforts.

By accepting what the external structures have told us we need to do, we have given the power of our realities and ourselves to others. It is time to tell a new story for women, and that can only start with women.

In my 20s I was such a serious, boring-looking person. I would never do my nails. I never even danced. But I was taught by the women. They had gone through hell, but they would dance and sing. I came to realise I can't argue for a happy world if I am not happy myself.

In every single culture I encountered, there were always women who defied cultural norms to do what they believed was right for them. This phenomenon has never been related to how rich, poor, successful or not successful the woman may be.

As women, we must speak out, speak up, say no to our inheritance of loss and yes to a future of women-led dialogue about women's rights and value.

I have come to understand that in order to effectively advance women's rights, we need to galvanize a global women's movement.

Since I was 15 years old I have dedicated my life to serving women.

There's a lot of projection that if you're in service then you shouldn't look good. I'm no different from anybody else. I like clothes, I like shoes, I like to go have nice dinners, I like to dance. Just because I've dedicated myself to serving women, why do you think I need to sacrifice myself?

Women still need higher political representation and to be included at decision making tables in all issues in order for solutions that relates from peace to food, to health, to basic stability in the world. We cannot continue to marginalize half of the population in the world in finding sustainable solutions that are good for all.

Women are part of peace keeping troops in countries like Liberia.

My message to the world is that until we recognize that peace is not just the absence of war but the revival of life on the "backlines," where women are keeping kids in school, caring for the sick and injured, and daily negotiating space for the continuation of critical life processes of this nature, we're going to continue to miss the point.

It appears easier to talk about protecting women than it is to fully include women at all decision-making levels in peace talks and post-conflict planning.

Women in the Arab world have a rich history in their active participation in political change from the Algeria revolution against the French occupation to the most recent revolution in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya among other countries. The question is not their participation. Their question is the incorporation of women's voices fully in the new definitions of the countries where change has happened.

Only 8 percent of peace talks have included women at any level.

Women have never been a chief negotiator in any UN-sponsored talks.

Only 1 in 13 participants in peace negotiations since 1992 has been a woman.

I believe that a lot of progress has been achieved to address gender inequality: We have moved from a time where women in the US could not apply for credit card without their husband's signature to a time where women are the owners of their businesses.

From joblessness to lack of education and professional skills to sexual and gender-based violence, women face a multi-faceted oppression.

From an economic perspective, women are treated unfairly: they perform 66 percent of the world's work and produce 50 percent of the food but they only earn 10 percent of the income and own 1 percent of the property.

Unfortunately, violence against women is not the only injustice women face globally; it is one of the many inequalities that impede the full development of socially excluded women globally.

It seems to me that violence against women has been tolerated for so long that the world has become numb to it.

I believe that leadership acts should be manifested by engaging in external work that can be observed and shared with everyone else.

I believe that there is an urgent need to restructure the discussion of war to include the impact it has on women.

Working with women survivors of war has taught me that we need to listen to women's perspectives on war in order to understand how to effectively rebuild a country, a community and a family.

Historically speaking, religious and conservative groups always wanted the control over the private sphere that impacts women most, as reflected by family law and women's access to resources and mobility. And often secular groups traded this for economic incentives and trade.

War is nothing but a microcosm of peace... it shows you life in a more intense way and that's how I continue to live it... for good or bad reasons.

I learned that victims come in all image - some raped, some witnessing an act of violence, some losing loved ones. I learned that the solutions come by both listening to the people impacted by the crisis and by learning from historical experiences in other places.

If half the society isn't engaged on any number of sectors, success and potential will be limited. In that sense, I do definitely believe there is a growing movement and moment for women's issues.

Since a very young age, my mother made sure to tell me about the plight of women. As she raised my awareness about women's issues, she also made sure to ingrain in me the importance of being strong and independent and not to let anybody define me by their images of what women should be.

Long-term trauma for women who have survived armed conflict is a haunting reminder that health issues and depression can follow decades after the end of war, but women who hope for healing can and do move forward.

It is the diversity of views that stems from different experiences and different backgrounds that lead to healthy decision-making and not the unified experiences and unified views.

When war ends, women are the first to pick up the pieces. Where there is no market place, they go door to door. When homes are destroyed, mothers and daughters haul stones to rebuild or plow fields together.

Without women's full inclusion at the decision making table, we cannot have any healthy decision making that is good for men and women alike.

The front[line] of wars is increasingly non-human eyes peering down on our perceived enemies from space, guiding missiles toward unseen targets.

Believe in your passions and act on them.

Since war often enters homes through the "kitchen door," we need to understand women's attempts to keep life going in the face of shortage of food, closing of schools and reduced freedoms.

Passionately enjoy life!

I dont want to be someone in my sixties holding on to a group that I created when I was in my twenties.

I find it amazing that the only group of people who are not fighting and not killing and not pillaging and not burning and not raping, and the group of people who are mostly — though not exclusively — who are keeping life going in the midst of war, are not included in the negotiating table.

One year of the world’s military spending equals 700 years of the U.N. budget and equals 2,928 years of the U.N. budget allocated for women.

The injustice is that women continue to be the main target of violence both during wartime and peacetime and yet there is still a lack of a public outrage.

Where has change ever been clean and nice? It has always been messy and painful.

Stronger women build stronger nations.

Growing up under Saddam's rule, I witnessed many injustices occurring everyday in my country and yet I could not do anything to prevent them.

Changes don't happen in the world by playing it safe, taking risks is the way to change the world.

Everything is give and take. The solutions are in the middle not in the extremity of the situation.

Living in war is a co- existence with death.

Leadership is not about having the charisma or speaking inspirational words, but about leading with example.

Everything can be taken from you in a second, but the human spirit is so strong. War can teach you so much about evil, and so much about good.

I firmly believe today that the only way to stop violence against women is to speak out and refused to be silenced.

War is not a computer-generated missile striking a digital map. War is the color of earth as it explodes in our faces, the sound of child pleading, the smell of smoke and fear. Women survivors of war are not the single image portrayed on the television screen, but the glue that holds families and countries together. Perhaps by understanding women, and the other side of war ... we will have more humility in our discussions of wars... perhaps it is time to listen to womens side of history.

Women are not just victims; they are survivors and leaders on the community-level backlines of peace and stability.