Women Hold Up Half the Sky, a new anthology of Nicola Sturgeon speeches, comes out tomorrow.
Published by Sandstone Press, independently of the Scottish Government and the SNP, the book covers the First Minister’s speeches from when she was elected in 2014 to when the country left the EU in February 2020.
Here are the top quotes from the book:
1. “I hope that my election as First Minister sends a strong, positive message to girls and young women. There should be no limit to your ambition or what you can achieve. If you are good enough and work hard enough, no glass ceiling should stop you achieving your dreams.”
‘My pledge today is simple and heartfelt’ – given to the Scottish Parliament, November 19, 2014
2. “We are likely to make progress in the right direction by aiming high than we ever will by being overcautious.”
‘We need men to show leadership’ – given at launch of 50:50 by 2020 at Edinburgh Napier University, June 25, 2015
3. “Women should not just be supporting the sky. We should be reaching for it.”
‘Women hold up half the sky’ – given to the Chinese People’s Association for Friendship with Foreign Countries in Beijing, July 27, 2015
READ MORE: Nicola Sturgeon speech anthology a 'feminist document from a feminist leader'
4. “We must make a reality of the adage that education is the great leveller in life.”
‘60,000 excited little minds’ – given at the Wester Hailes Education Centre while launching the Scottish Government’s Attainment Challenge on September 18, 2015
5. “When the world is looking for leadership, courage, and a simple display of common humanity, we will be found standing eagerly at the front of the queue, not cowering timidly at the back.”
‘Our response will be judged by history’ – given to a humanitarian summit after a photograph of three-year-old refugee Alan Shenu was photographed lying lifeless on a Turkish beach, September 4, 2015
6. “The absence of any leadership or the lack of any advance planning, either from the politicians who had proposed the referendum or those who had campaigned for a Leave vote, must count as one of the most shameful abdications of responsibility in modern political history.”
‘Reflections on the EU referendum’ – given to the Institute for Public Policy Research in Edinburgh on July 25, 2016
7. “Scotland’s modern identity, much like the US, is an inclusive one. We take the approach that if you want to be Scottish you can be.”
‘The underpinning principle of the state’ – given to the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University in California, April 4, 2017
8. “Any nation that underuses the potential of women, that underuses half its population, is needlessly impoverishing itself.”
‘Women in conflict resolution’ – given to the United Nations in New York, April 5, 2017
9. “Everyone in Scotland knows, although it is a point that is usually lost, that there was often very little difference between a No voter tempered by a new path, but with anxieties about the future, and a Yes voter who felt solidarity with the rest of the UK but felt that we would be better taking decisions for ourselves.”
‘The importance of truth’ – given to the Political Studies Association at Strathclyde University in Glasgow, April 12, 2017
10. “I look forward to the day when Scotland returns to where we belong. To EU membership and a place in the council and European Parliament. As an independent nation we will embrace international co-operation, and sing of solidarity and friendship not out of sorrow but with optimism and hope for the future.”
‘A cup of kindness’ – given to the European Policy Centre in Brussels, February 10, 2020
Women Hold Up Half The Sky, by Robert Davidson, is published by Sandstone Press and is available to order tomorrow from bookshops and at www.sandstone
press.com
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