Political Quotes

“Madam Speaker, I rise today in strong support of this important legislation. Every child deserves access to a quality education--every child--and, unfortunately, that is not always the case for girls around the world. Adolescent girls, in particular, are most at risk of dropping out of school. Worldwide, there are about 61 million girls between the ages of 6 and 14 who are not in school, and that is unacceptable. It is just unacceptable. Madam Speaker, as a Green Beret who has operated all over the world, I have seen this up close and personal. I have seen this firsthand. I can tell you this from my experiences: I know firsthand that, where women thrive in business, where women thrive in civil society, in politics, and in government, extremism doesn't. That is it. Where women thrive in all of those places, the extremists do not. So this isn't just an economic issue, although that is a very important one, or a humanitarian issue. This is a national security issue--for the United States of America, for the Western world, for the entire world. For me, in one of my combat tours in Afghanistan, an Afghan elder I knew, whom I developed a relationship with throughout this tour, in every meeting kept talking about his secret weapon, his secret weapon. This was how we were going to defeat the Taliban and defeat the extremists, with this secret weapon. I finally demanded to see this secret weapon. It wasn't a missile. It wasn't a weapon, per se, at all. It was his teenage daughters.…”