Zainab Salbi quotes:

Being a leader for me is about having the courage to speak the truth, and live the truth, despite attempts to silence our thoughts, feelings, and past experiences.

Women in the Arab world have a rich history in their active participation in political change from the Algeria revolution against the French occupation to the most recent revolution in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya among other countries. The question is not their participation. Their question is the incorporation of women's voices fully in the new definitions of the countries where change has happened.

While women may look different, as some wear suits and others wear saris, or some cover their hair while others wear their hair loose, women need to stand together because they all face the central point of discrimination, although the extremity of which may be different from Kigali to Kabul.

As women, we must speak out, speak up, say no to our inheritance of loss and yes to a future of women-led dialogue about women's rights and value.

I grew up with injustice and could do nothing about it. But once in America, I had freedom of choice.

Long-term trauma for women who have survived armed conflict is a haunting reminder that health issues and depression can follow decades after the end of war, but women who hope for healing can and do move forward.

Do you know that people fall in love in war and go to school and go to factories and hospitals and get divorced and go dancing and go playing and live life?

From an economic perspective, women are treated unfairly: they perform 66 percent of the world's work and produce 50 percent of the food but they only earn 10 percent of the income and own 1 percent of the property.

No change can come if those who are impacted the most by discrimination are not willing to stand up for themselves.

Like life, peace begins with women. We are the first to forge lines of alliance and collaboration across conflict divides.

I believe that a lot of progress has been achieved to address gender inequality: We have moved from a time where women in the US could not apply for credit card without their husband's signature to a time where women are the owners of their businesses.

I by no means intend to simplify the challenges women face in any culture. Women are marginalized in all cultures in my opinion, some in more extreme ways than others.

The single thing all women need in the world is inspiration, and inspiration comes from storytelling.

In every single culture I encountered, there were always women who defied cultural norms to do what they believed was right for them. This phenomenon has never been related to how rich, poor, successful or not successful the woman may be.

Historically speaking, religious and conservative groups always wanted the control over the private sphere that impacts women most, as reflected by family law and women's access to resources and mobility. And often secular groups traded this for economic incentives and trade.

From joblessness to lack of education and professional skills to sexual and gender-based violence, women face a multi-faceted oppression.

It seems to me that violence against women has been tolerated for so long that the world has become numb to it.

I don't have a child, so Women for Women is like my child. But I always said I would step down after 20 years. I didn't want to be a 60-year-old woman holding on to something I created when I was 23.

I have come to understand that in order to effectively advance women's rights, we need to galvanize a global women's movement.

Do you know that people fall in love in war and go to school and go to factories and hospitals and get divorced and go dancing and go playing and live life?"

By accepting what the external structures have told us we need to do, we have given the power of our realities and ourselves to others. It is time to tell a new story for women, and that can only start with women.

Unfortunately, violence against women is not the only injustice women face globally; it is one of the many inequalities that impede the full development of socially excluded women globally.

I firmly believe today that the only way to stop violence against women is to speak out and refused to be silenced.

Sometimes you just have to jump off the cliff without knowing where you will land.

Changes don't happen in the world by playing it safe, taking risks is the way to change the world.

Without women's full inclusion at the decision making table, we cannot have any healthy decision making that is good for men and women alike.

Everything can be taken from you in a second, but the human spirit is so strong. War can teach you so much about evil, and so much about good.

I couldn't find anyone doing something about the astounding injustices women were experiencing, so I decided to do something myself. I cannot tell you how many people ridiculed my efforts.

There's a lot of projection that if you're in service then you shouldn't look good. I'm no different from anybody else. I like clothes, I like shoes, I like to go have nice dinners, I like to dance. Just because I've dedicated myself to serving women, why do you think I need to sacrifice myself?

Believe in your passions and act on them.

Every woman must own her story; otherwise we are all part of the silence.

Everything is give and take. The solutions are in the middle not in the extremity of the situation.

Growing up under Saddam's rule, I witnessed many injustices occurring everyday in my country and yet I could not do anything to prevent them.

I believe that leadership acts should be manifested by engaging in external work that can be observed and shared with everyone else.

I believe that there is an urgent need to restructure the discussion of war to include the impact it has on women.

I dont want to be someone in my sixties holding on to a group that I created when I was in my twenties.

I learned that victims come in all image - some raped, some witnessing an act of violence, some losing loved ones. I learned that the solutions come by both listening to the people impacted by the crisis and by learning from historical experiences in other places.

If half the society isn't engaged on any number of sectors, success and potential will be limited. In that sense, I do definitely believe there is a growing movement and moment for women's issues.

It appears easier to talk about protecting women than it is to fully include women at all decision-making levels in peace talks and post-conflict planning.

It is the diversity of views that stems from different experiences and different backgrounds that lead to healthy decision-making and not the unified experiences and unified views.

Leadership is about encouraging women to break their silence and tell their stories to the world.

Leadership is not about having the charisma or speaking inspirational words, but about leading with example.

Living in war is a co- existence with death.

My message to the world is that until we recognize that peace is not just the absence of war but the revival of life on the "backlines," where women are keeping kids in school, caring for the sick and injured, and daily negotiating space for the continuation of critical life processes of this nature, we're going to continue to miss the point.

One year of the world's military spending equals 700 years of the U.N. budget and equals 2,928 years of the U.N. budget allocated for women.

Only 1 in 13 participants in peace negotiations since 1992 has been a woman.

Only 8 percent of peace talks have included women at any level.

Passionately enjoy life!

Since a very young age, my mother made sure to tell me about the plight of women. As she raised my awareness about women's issues, she also made sure to ingrain in me the importance of being strong and independent and not to let anybody define me by their images of what women should be.

Since war often enters homes through the "kitchen door," we need to understand women's attempts to keep life going in the face of shortage of food, closing of schools and reduced freedoms.

Stronger women build stronger nations.

The front[line] of wars is increasingly non-human eyes peering down on our perceived enemies from space, guiding missiles toward unseen targets.

The injustice is that women continue to be the main target of violence both during wartime and peacetime and yet there is still a lack of a public outrage.

War is not a computer-generated missile striking a digital map. War is the color of earth as it explodes in our faces, the sound of child pleading, the smell of smoke and fear. Women survivors of war are not the single image portrayed on the television screen, but the glue that holds families and countries together. Perhaps by understanding women, and the other side of war ... we will have more humility in our discussions of wars... perhaps it is time to listen to womens side of history.

War is nothing but a microcosm of peace... it shows you life in a more intense way and that's how I continue to live it... for good or bad reasons.

When war ends, women are the first to pick up the pieces. Where there is no market place, they go door to door. When homes are destroyed, mothers and daughters haul stones to rebuild or plow fields together.

Where has change ever been clean and nice? It has always been messy and painful.

Women are not just victims; they are survivors and leaders on the community-level backlines of peace and stability.

Women are part of peace keeping troops in countries like Liberia.

Women have never been a chief negotiator in any UN-sponsored talks.

Women still need higher political representation and to be included at decision making tables in all issues in order for solutions that relates from peace to food, to health, to basic stability in the world. We cannot continue to marginalize half of the population in the world in finding sustainable solutions that are good for all.

Working with women survivors of war has taught me that we need to listen to women's perspectives on war in order to understand how to effectively rebuild a country, a community and a family.