Top 84 Quotes & Sayings by Reshma Saujani - Page 2

My family was one of the few South Asian families in my community in Illinois. Growing up in the '80s, I remember going to the K-Mart with my mom, when she was wearing her sari, and she'd get made fun of. People would ask my mother, 'Were you born with that dot on your head?'

There's no better way of learning from your experiences than having an open and honest conversation with yourself about why you fell short.

As women, we're presented this false choice that is either our children or our work. But I don't think I fully understood the paradox until I had a child. I bring my son to work and let other parents do the same. I am very intentional about the workplace that I create, and my son is a big part of that.

When I first ran for office in 2010, I was 32 years old. The average age in Congress was 69. I was a brown woman whose name was Reshma Saujani - a name most people couldn't pronounce. And there was never a South Asian woman who had ever run for United States Congress before.

I wanted to become a lawyer because I saw Kelly McGillis on 'The Accused.' 'Grey's Anatomy,' 'L.A. Law,' 'Ally McBeal' - all of these have inspired women to go into law. I think the opposite is happening in technology.

I refuse to see losing as a negative. Obama lost in '83 when he ran against Bobby Rush. Hillary lost in '08. Even Lincoln lost the first election. It's a useful learning experience.

You're never too young or too old to be a mentor.

When I'm in the best physical shape of my life, I'm in the best professional space. I can track the connection between the two.

Coding - everyone thinks it's a superpower. And so when you feel like, 'I've learned how to code,' and you say to your mom or the girl sitting next to you, 'I know how that app is built, I know the logic behind how that was created' - that's powerful.

It's important to find people who believe in you. You also have to find people that you believe in.

I had to learn how to not be a micro-manager. Maternity leave made me do that. I just couldn't anymore.

For me, if I'm away from my son for more than 48 hours, I'm crabby.

With my own son, my style of mothering has been to bring him everywhere. He's sitting on my lap during interviews. When I went to the White House to meet President Obama, he was there.

I have learned how to say no, and I have to check myself all the time. I'm not great at it still. Women get criticized a lot more for saying no than men do.

I don't like to do small things. If I'm going to do something, I'm going to really make an impact.

Every day, no matter how tired my father was, he'd put me in the car and drive me to Schaumburg Public Library, and he'd read to me from books about Dr. King, Mahatma Gandhi, Eleanor Roosevelt.

Don't be afraid of failure. That's not an easy lesson for teenagers - especially teenage girls - to learn. Our society sends us a lot of messages that imply we're supposed to be ashamed when we fall short. But I think we should be throwing each other failure parties!

If you haven't failed yet, you haven't tried anything.

We can't think of any better way of becoming our best selves, than by finding something we're great at!

'Fail hard, fail fast, fail often. It's the key to success.' This one I learned from experience!

Fail fast, fail hard, fail often.

Teach one girl how to code, she'll teach four. The replication effect is so powerful.

Embracing failure is the most important trait I've developed in my career. I have tried to learn from my failures, and I believe it has made me stronger, more confident and more resilient.

Coding is the language of the future, and every girl should learn it. As I've learned from watching girls grow and learn in our classrooms, coding is fun, collaborative and creative.