Michelle Bachelet Quotes

You all want to know what is my dream? Very simple. To walk along the beach, holding the hand of my lover.

Chile has changed. The people have become more mature and they are more conscious of their rights. They want to participate and have a say about things such as if and where a power plant can be built.

The respect for human rights is nowadays not so much a matter of having international standards, but rather questions of compliance with those standards.

My message to women is: Women: We can do it. We are capable of doing almost anything, but we must learn we cannot do it all at once, we need to prioritize.

U.N. Women was created due to the acknowledgement that gender equality and women's empowerment was still, despite progress, far from what it should be. Transforming political will and decisions, such as the Member States creating U.N. Women, into concrete steps towards gender equality and women's empowerment, I think is one of the main challenges.

When I'm speaking of love, when I'm speaking of reversing hate, I'm speaking not only of reconciliation - even I don't use that word - I use another word in Spanish, that's called 'reencuentro' - it's not reconciliation.

There does not have to be trade-off between growth and social protection. A democracy does not mean much if it doesn't respond to the needs and will of its people.

When women earn the money for the family, everyone in the family benefits. We also know that when women have an income, everyone wins because women dedicate 90% of the income to health, education, to food security, to the children, to the family, or to the community, so when women have an income, everybody wins.

The priority for my government is that there will be development for everyone, equally.

In any area of the UN we ... have to agree on certain language that can represent the same spirit, but that can be accepted by everyone.

As a vibrant force in civil society, women continue to press for their rights, equal participation in decision-making, and the upholding of the principles of the revolution by the highest levels of leadership in Egypt.

I took a gamble to exercise leadership without losing my feminine nature.

My top priority for 2012 will be to make a renewed push for women's economic empowerment and political participation.

In artillery exercises, women always win because they're more accurate.

As a doctor, when I was minister of health and would go somewhere, little girls would come up to me and say, 'I want to be like you one day, I want to be a doctor.' Now, they tell me, 'I want to be president just like you.' All of us can dream as big as we want.

I was a woman, a divorcee, a socialist, an agnostic . . . all possible sins together.

Chile needs to unite behind the goals of reducing poverty and creating more equal opportunities so that everyone can benefit from what the country has to offer.

People see I am a mother and head of a household. Today in Chile, one-third of households are run by women. They wake up, take the children to school, go to work. To them I am hope.

The challenge is for us to reinvigorate the relationship with the Chilean people and to give state institutions new legitimacy. But this is also a universal phenomenon. There's also disenchantment with politics in Europe.

It isn't that women are less ambitious,but women want to find a balance between work, love, and family.

As more and more women, men and young people raise their voices and become active in local government, and more local leaders take action for the safety of women and girls, change happens.