Joan Halifax: Essential to compassion: We cannot be attached to outcome.

Donna Karan: I realized I needed to address people, not just dress them.

Sejal Hathi: I made it my mission to build a sisterhood of change-makers.

Madeleine Albright: Women’s issues are the hardest issues; they are the ones that have to do with life and death.

Johanna Blakley: If you want to understand the audience in the global village, figure out what amuses them.

Stephen Lewis: We have no illusions about the UN’s six-decade failure to protect women. Let us not pretend utopia is imminent.

Caroline Casey: The power of believing in the right thing has given me extraordinary potential.

Eve Ensler: There is a recipe for survival — it has to do with attention and resources that everybody deserves.