[Mandela] made the expected remarks to welcome us. Then he said something that left me in awe: While he was pleased to host so many dignitaries, he was most pleased to have in attendance three of his former jailers from Robben Island who had treated him with respect during his imprisonment. He asked them to stand so he could introduce them to the crowd. ... When I got to know Mandela better, he explained that as a young man he had a quick temper. In prison he learned to control his emotions in order to survive. His years in jail had given him the time and motivation to look deeply into his own heart and to deal with the pain he found. He reminded me that gratitude and forgiveness, which often result from pain and suffering, require tremendous discipline. The day his imprisonment ended, he told me, "as I walked out the door toward the gate that would lead to my freedom, I knew if I didn't leave my bitterness and hatred behind, I'd still be in prison."

--"Living History," by Hillary Rodham Clinton

The author Jane O'Reilly, who came of age in the 1950s, wrote a famous essay for Ms. magazine in 1972 recounting the moments in her life when she realized she was being devalued because she was female. She described the instant of revelation as a click! -- like the mechanism that triggers a flashbulb. It could be as blatant as the help-wanted ads that, until the mid-sixties, were divided into separate columns for men and women, or as subtle as an impulse to surrender the front section of the newspaper to any man in the vicinity -- click! -- contenting yourself with the women's pages until he finishes reading the serious news.

-- "Living History," by Hillary Rodham Clinton

I wasn't born a First Lady or a Senator. I wasn't born a Democrat. I wasn't born a lawyer or an advocate for women's rights and human rights. I wasn't born a wife or mother. I was born an American in the middle of the twentieth century, a fortunate time and place. I was free to make choices unavailable to past generations of women in my own country and inconceivable to many women in the world today. ... My mother and my grandmothers could never had lived my life; my father and my grandfathers could never have imagined it. But they bestowed on me the promise of America, which made my life and my choices possible.

-- "Living History," by Hillary Rodham Clinton