Kamala Harris Quotes (About Leadership and Power)
The first black woman to serve as vice president was Kamala Harris, an African American lawyer and politician with prior experience serving as California’s attorney general. She is the first female senator from California, the vice president-elect of the United States, and an Asian American. Below are some of the best Kamala Harris quotes you would ever find.
Kamala Harris Quotes
Everyone will be inspired by some of Kamala Harris’s best and most well-known comments.
1. I was raised to be an independent woman, not the victim of anything. – Kamala Harris
2. My mother had a saying: ‘Kamala, you may be the first to do many things, but make sure you’re not the last.’ – Kamala Harris
3. The American dream belongs to all of us. – Kamala Harris
4. If we do not lift women and families, everyone will fall short. – Kamala Harris
5. I’m opposed to any policy that would deny in our country any human being access to public safety, public education, or public health, period. – Kamala Harris
6. If you want to deal with an epidemic – crime or health – the smartest, most effective, and cheapest way to deal with it is prevention first. – Kamala Harris
7. I believe in the adage that ‘as goes California, so goes the country.’ – Kamala Harris
8. To change criminal justice policy in any meaningful way means to propose changing a very longstanding system. It’s not realistic to think you can do it overnight. – Kamala Harris
9. In this great country, we celebrate success. We don’t want to penalize those who have done well. – Kamala Harris
10. The truth is that the vast majority of Americans are good, fair, and just, and they want their country to reflect those ideals. – Kamala Harris
11. Doing nothing while the middle class is hurting. That’s not leadership. Loose regulations and lax enforcement. That’s not leadership. That’s abandoning our middle class. – Kamala Harris
12. I often advocate that we look at many sides of an issue, walk in someone else’s shoes, and identify and reject false choices. – Kamala Harris
13. I do not believe that government should be in the business of telling women what they should do with their bodies. Kamala Harris: I’m one of the luckiest people on earth. – Kamala Harris
14. Everybody will make mistakes, and for some, that mistake will rise to the level of being a crime. – Kamala Harris
15. As a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, I know that the men and women of our intelligence community put their lives on the line every day, and they do very dangerous work to keep our country safe. – Kamala Harris
16. To be smart about crime, we should not be in a position of constantly reacting to crime after it happens. We should be looking at preventing crime before it happens. – Kamala Harris
17. A family shares hardships and a connected history. – Kamala Harris
18. I’ll be judged on the body of work and not the popularity of any one decision. – Kamala Harris
19. We’re talking about the Proposition 8 case fundamental rights, and civil rights. I offer no apology for the position I took in Prop. 8. – Kamala Harris
20. If segregationists had their way, I would not be a member of the United States Senate today, I would not be a top contender to be president of the United States. – Kamala Harris
21. I did not learn the flaws of the criminal-justice system in law school or college or by reading about it. I grew up knowing the flaws and how they were disproportionately impacting the black community. It’s not academic for me. – Kamala Harris
22. What we all want is public safety. We don’t want rhetoric that’s framed through ideology. – Kamala Harris
23. I support Medicare for all. This is my preferred policy. – Kamala Harris. Kamala Harris Quotes
24. So many people trip in front of them because they’re looking over there or up ahead. – Kamala Harris
25. I’ve had the good fortune and blessing to run for the offices for which I wanted to do the work. – Kamala Harris
26. “Imperfect though we may be, I believe we are a great country.” – Kamala Harris.
27. “When my mother came from India, at the age of 19, maybe she didn’t quite imagine this moment. But she believed so deeply in an America where a moment like this is possible.” – Kamala Harris.
28. “We don’t stop fighting, that’s not who we are.” – Kamala Harris.
29. “You can’t deny it. You can’t look away. It’s there. I do believe people are seeing the injustice of it all and are prepared to take action in a way that we’ve not seen before. And that gives me hope.” – Kamala Harris.
30. “Your vote is your voice, and your voice is your power. Don’t let anyone take away your power.” – Kamala Harris.
31. “While I may be the first woman in this office, I will not be the last. Because every little girl, watching tonight sees that this is a country of possibilities.” – Kamala Harris.
Strong Black Woman Quotes by Kamala Harris
32. “What I want young women and girls to know is: You are powerful and your voice matters.” – Kamala Harris.
33. “Every day, pregnant women walk into their doctor’s office for checkups, advice, and treatment; but that experience is very different for black women.” – Kamala Harris.
34. “Simply put, every issue is a Black woman’s issue, and Black women’s issues are everyone’s issues.” – Kamala Harris.
35. “Family means everything to me. I’ve had many titles throughout my career, but Momala will always be the one that means the most to me.” – Kamala Harris.
36. “There is no vaccine for racism… We have got to do the work to fulfill that promise of equal justice under the law. Because none of us are free until all of us are free.” – Kamala Harris.
37. “We the people have the power to build a better future.” – Kamala Harris.
38. “You never have to ask anyone permission to lead. I want you to remember that.” – Kamala Harris.
39. “When you want to lead, you lead.” – Kamala Harris.
40. “We have to act with fierce urgency. Justice demands it.” ―
41. “You have to sweat the small stuff because sometimes it turns out that the small stuff is the big stuff.” ―
42. “One of my mother’s favorite sayings was “Don’t let anybody tell you who you are. You tell them who you are.” ―
43. “Our unity is our strength, and our diversity is our power. We reject the myth of “us” vs. “them.” We are in this together” ―
44. “The criminal justice system punishes people for their poverty.” ―
45. “I would hear out my critics, but I wouldn’t be constrained by them.” ―
46. “In 2016, a quarter of all kids in the United States under the age of five lived in immigrant families.” ―
47. “At every step of the way, I’ve been guided by the words I spoke from the first time I stood in a courtroom: – Kamala Harris
48. “We cannot let up in the fight for equality, fairness, and justice. Even when, if not especially when, it is hard or uncomfortable to talk about.” — Cosmopolitan
49. “Together, united, as a country we can be a force for change.” — Cosmopolitan
50. “The time for outrage is now. The time for solidarity is now. And the time for action is now. The time for change is now.” — Cosmopolitan
51. It was an act of patriotism when we worked to pass a law allowing the prosecution of federal hate crimes in the name of Matthew Shepard and James Byrd. – Kamala Harris
52. I strongly believe that for serious and violent criminals, we must absolutely hold them accountable for their crimes and send them to prison. – Kamala Harris
53. I have a difficult time sitting down for long periods. – Kamala Harris
54. A family looks for ways to support and inspire one another. – Kamala Harris
56. I always start my campaigns early, and I run hard. Maybe it comes from the rough-and-tumble world of San Francisco politics, where it’s not even a contact sport – it’s a blood sport. This is how I am as a candidate. This is how I run campaigns. – Kamala Harris
57. I have loved to cook since I was a child in my mother’s kitchen. If I don’t have time to cook, I’ll just read a cookbook. – Kamala Harris
58. And so I would not enforce a law that would reject people and turn them away without giving them a fair and due process to determine if we should give them asylum and refuge. – Kamala Harris
59. The bottom line of the Hyde Amendment is that it is directly, in effect, targeting poor women and women who don’t have money. – Kamala Harris
60. Sexism is real in this country. – Kamala Harris.
61. Mitt Romney subscribes to the cynical logic that says the American dream belongs to some of us but not all of us. – Kamala Harris
62. I grew up hearing stories about my grandmother – my mother’s mother – who used to go to villages in India in her little VW bug. My grandmother would take a bullhorn and make sure women in these villages knew how to access birth control. – Kamala Harris
63. I want to use my position of leadership to help move along at a faster pace than what I believe and know the Obama administration wants to do around the urgency of climate change. – Kamala Harris
64. I was born realizing the flaws in the criminal justice system. – Kamala Harris
Quotes by Kamala Harris Regarding Ambition
65. We don’t have to guess what Mitt Romney would have done if he were president. Because he told us. He said we should let foreclosures – and I quote – ‘hit the bottom’ so the market could I quote – ‘run its course.’ – Kamala Harris
66. Hate crime is not new in the United States. – Kamala Harris
67. Instead of giving corporations a big tax cut, let’s give the middle class a real, permanent tax cut. – Kamala Harris
68. I’m prepared to say that law enforcement should be allowed to seize the guns of those who are suspected to be involved in domestic terrorism. – Kamala Harris
69. My mother was and will always remain my greatest hero. – Kamala Harris
70. Getting smart on crime does not mean reducing sentences or punishments for crimes. – Kamala Harris
71. Anti-Semitism is real in this country. – Kamala Harris. Kamala Harris Quotes
72. California is not just the Golden State. We are also the Internet State. – Kamala Harris
73. My parents met when they were graduate students at UC Berkeley in the 1960s. They were both active in the civil rights movement. – Kamala Harris
74. My mother came from India to go to the University of California, Berkeley. – Kamala Harris
75. Generally speaking, the public appetite for criminal justice policy is just tough talk. – Kamala Harris
76. We need to incorporate that age-old concept of redemption into the work that we do in the criminal justice system in California. – Kamala Harris
77. Well, yeah, people are working in our country. You know what? They’re working two or three jobs, and in America, people should not have to work more than one job to be able to put food on the table and have a roof over their heads. – Kamala Harris
78. Lena Waithe won an Emmy for writing while starring in the Netflix show ‘Master of None,’ but it might be more accurate to call her a Master of Everything. – Kamala Harris
79. I love being in the courtroom. Kamala Harris: We’ve got to keep our eye on what’s happening with Russia and North Korea. We cannot lose sight of domestic policy, either. Healthcare. Immigration. Climate change. – Kamala Harris
80. I’ve had the honor of speaking at many commencements. – Kamala Harris
81. People who work for me know that family comes first. I’m fortunate to have a family that is very supportive of the work I do, so I don’t have to live two separate lives. – Kamala Harris
Every child girl watching tonight, according to Kamala Harris, knows that the United States is a land of opportunity. Our nation has made it obvious to all of its youngsters, regardless of gender, to dream big, lead with conviction, and view themselves in a way that others might not, just because they haven’t done so before.