Top 30 Maya Soetoro-Ng Quotes

The facts are simply that my brother was born in the United States at the Kapiolani Hospital for Women and Children in 1961. His birth certificate has been authenticated by a number of sources.

Government is supposed to lead by example in many cases. Government that’s not particularly caring and is hands-off is not particularly inspiring.

My mother was a courageous woman, and she had such tremendous love for life. She loved the natural world. She would wake us up in the middle of the night to go look at the moon. When I was a teenager, this was a source of great frustration because I wanted to sleep.

Being told that I looked like I belonged everywhere and to everyone helped me feel my fledgling pride in my own multiracialism.

Government should exist in order to help fortify the country and make those who are in need better able to meet their own.

You really need to love something or someone in order to work hard enough to be very successful. You have to believe in something and have a certain optimism. Faith and optimism come from love.

We need to teach our children empathy and care and love and communication and social responsibility in preparation for adulthood.

I think we could benefit from world history that is specifically taught in a multi-faceted fashion that allows for an understanding that perspectives on truth can be very different.

My brother loves this country deeply. He has laid down roots, and he has always been incredibly patriotic and committed to this country.

I’m half white, half Asian. I think of myself as hybrid. People usually think I’m Latina when they meet me. That’s what made me learn Spanish.

I think you can have varied and seemingly contradictory depictions of a single person because we all have many facets and, in a way, many selves.

As children, we develop some scorn for our parents and their imperfections.

My father saw Islam as a way to connect with the community. He never went to prayer services except for big communal events. I am absolutely certain that my father did not go to services every Friday. He was not religious.

I like that there are young people being given opportunities to explore and learn and grow and become themselves with a path that is associated with my mother. She would have liked that very much.

I’ve always kept a journal and brought storytelling into my teaching.

It was as a mother that I needed my mother back, and I needed to conjure her anew and think about what she would have counselled and what she would have given.

We can’t afford to live in isolation, and we need to teach our kids that the things that they do not only matter to others far away but impact others who live far away, and there are ripples of effect.

We can do much to help our communities loosen their boundaries and begin to welcome a multitude of ways of being to make sure that individuals of mixed race, religion, or ethnicities don’t feel the need to choose one or the other but see their layers as a gift, something that adds beauty.

Slow down and think about the lessons of the elders.

Barack himself is very much a regular guy, not a silver spoon, incredibly smart, but, you know, he’s a scholarship kid, made good use of the resources that were available to him, worked incredibly hard.

My whole family was Muslim, and most of the people I knew were Muslim.

I don’t think the White House has always reflected the textures and flavors of this country.

Each of us has a right to name ourselves as we will.

Philosophically, I would say that I am Buddhist.

My mother would have enjoyed the idea that her name was being used to build bridges. She cared a great deal and was very thoughtful and passionate about education and young women.

My hope is that I can continue writing and, in the future, I can just be Maya Soetoro-Ng.

I think a lot about our globalized world, our global interconnectedness, and it really saddens me when I see people ‘othering,’ when I see people who are willing to live narrowly.

Mom was an academic, so the riches that she had to bestow were of the mind.

We all have a limited amount of good judgment.

I think it’s true we look forward to enormous amounts of information, but I think we would be better off if we thought about the kinds of wisdom and thoughtfulness that we need in order to handle the amount of information ahead.