8 Awesome Pieces of Advice from Bad Ass Women

These bad ass women aren’t super human, but they work hard and have some great advice for you!

1. “Passion is energy. Feel the power that comes from focusing on what excites you.”
Oprah, media mogul

2. “So many people prefer to live in drama because it’s comfortable. It’s like someone staying in a bad marriage or relationship – it’s actually easier to stay because they know what to expect every day, versus leaving and not knowing what to expect.”
Ellen DeGeneres, comedian

3. “I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”
Maya Angelou, author/poet

4. I always did something I was a little not ready to do. I think that’s how you grow. When there’s that moment of ‘Wow, I’m not really sure I can do this,’ and you push through those moments, that’s when you have a breakthrough.”
Marissa Mayer, Yahoo CEO

5. “When you assume negative intent, you’re angry. If you take away that anger and assume positive intent, you will be amazed. Your emotional quotient goes up because you are no longer almost random in your response.”
Indra Nooyi, Pepsi CEO

6. “Well, the first quality of being a good leader is you have to be able to follow. See, a good leader can’t just be the leader all the time, I have to be able to follow.”
Lisa Leslie, former WNBA basketball player/U.S. Olympic athlete

7. “Any girl, she’s Latina sitting in El Paso, Texas…or for an African-American girl living in Georgia, who aspires to be, you know, a CEO of a pharmaceutical company, anything is possible.”
Anna Maria Chavez, Girl Scouts CEO

8. “Sometimes when we are generous in small, barely detectable ways, it can change someone else’s life forever.”
Margaret Cho, comedian

Emily DeRuy is a Washington, D.C.-based associate editor, covering education, reproductive rights, and inequality. A San Francisco native, she enjoys Giants baseball and misses Philz terribly.