Gayle Tzemach Lemmon

“I don't often think of Donald Trump, but his daughter is very smart. She's a woman working in real estate, which is predominantly men, and she's both savvy and articulate about her business and her business acumen.”

“The one thing you learn from looking at places like Afghanistan is that the power of business to do good is enormous.”

“The United States will not be in Afghanistan forever.”

“War reporters are often seen as a wild bunch of thrill-seekers who wade into danger zones simply for the sake of the adrenalin high the settings inevitably provide. But this one-dimensional explanation leaves out the core of the story, which is that reporters go to these places because they feel the tug of responsibility.”

“Numerically speaking, half the population cannot be a minority. Yet when it comes to women, the numbers plainly show that the mathematically impossible is the socially acceptable.”

“In reality, Afghanistan has functioned as a nation-state for more than two centuries, and its army and bureaucracy reach back to the 19th century.”

“When the Taliban captured Kabul in 1996 after a searing, four-year civil war, they immediately instituted laws which fit their utopic vision of the time of Islam's founding more than 1,300 years earlier. Afghan women's lives offered the most visible sign of the imagined past to which Afghanistan's present was to be returned.”

“What I learned at journalism school and at ABC - those skills are the same no matter where you are in the world.”

“Because microfinance is so manageable in terms of the size of the loan, people have made it the cornerstone to lifting women out of poverty.”

“Single mothers are raising more of America's children than ever before.”

“Women in Afghanistan do not ask the United States to stay for the simple or sentimental reason of safeguarding their rights. They are the first ones to say that this is not enough of a reason for the world's remaining superpower to remain in their country.”

“No one argues with the many benefits of breastfeeding for those women who choose it.”

“Women who choose to breastfeed should get as much education and support as possible.”

“We are so used to seeing women as victims of war to be pitied rather than survivors of war to be respected.”

“Educated mothers are 50 percent more likely to immunize their children than mothers with no schooling.”

“A social entrepreneur finds market-based solutions for change. Because without a market-based solution, without a sustainable solution, you go nowhere.”

“In Afghanistan, life is so fragile; who knows what the next week will bring? That fragility really affects the way you're able to report, and the kind of stories people will tell you.”

“A lot has been said about single mothers. Most of it has been less than flattering.”

“Certainly Afghans in general and women in particular want a country in which security is a daily reality rather than a campaign slogan or the focus of drive-by speeches from diplomats dropping in for the day.”

“The majority of Afghans do not see the Americans as foreign occupiers who must be defeated. Instead, they are hungry for the Americans to step up and help them make their country safer, their government cleaner and their economy stronger. They are disappointed because the international community has done too little, not too much.”