My father respected and admired my mother and was a person who was always standing by my side encouraging me to do more and believed in my capacity. So in that sense my own experience was very good in becoming an empowered woman. From early on I carried that strong message: 'You can do it.' So I never had any doubt that women can do a lot.

There are a lot of obstacles in the way of our understanding animal intelligence - not the least being that we can't even agree whether nonhuman species are conscious. We accept that chimps and dolphins experience awareness we like to think dogs and cats do. But what about mice and newts? What about a fly? Is anything going on there at all?

Bottom up thinkers try to start from experience and move from experience to understanding. They don't start with certain general principles they think beforehand are likely to be true they just hope to find out what reality is like.

The American experience influenced my understanding of individuality basic human rights freedom of expression and the rights and responsibilities of citizens.

All partisan movements add to the fullness of our understanding of society as a whole. They never detract or in any case one must not allow them to do so. Experience adds to experience.

Anybody who has gone through a life-changing experience will tell you there is a different understanding of what is real and what is important and when you are going through different moments you can reflect and go 'I have been through worse.'

Everybody experiences far more than he understands. Yet it is experience rather than understanding that influences behavior.

To use the same words is not a sufficient guarantee of understanding one must use the same words for the same genus of inward experience ultimately one must have one's experiences in common.

I joined the Labour party because I believed in equality in freedom of speech and in tolerance compassion and understanding for people irrespective of their background and views. In whatever I decide to do in the future I will hold to those principles.

Is there an equality of power between America and Iraq? Definitely not however the Iraqi people are standing fast and are defending their land courageously.

Since the day he came into office President Bush has worked to gut more than 34 years of hard work by weakening many of our Nation's standing environmental laws some of which were signed into law by his father.

More than ever before there is a global understanding that long-term social economic and environmental development would be impossible without healthy families communities and countries.

And I thought that was the best way for me to participate because standing in the crowd and listening is a fantastic education but it's not my nature. I need to be involved. So I did that instead.

We had great faith that with patience understanding and education that my family and I could be helpful in changing their minds and attitudes around.

Education is the silver bullet to improve this Nation's standing worldwide... and our teachers know that.

But instead of standing up for reason our government is handing education over to the world of faith.

Americans are a decade behind Canada when it comes to sex education and understanding their bodies.