Quotes from Michelle Bachelet

As the old joke goes, I have all the sins together. I am a woman, a Socialist, separated and agnostic.

Having experienced personally and through my family the tragedy of Chile is something always present in my memory. I do not want events of that nature ever to happen again, and I have dedicated an important part of my life to ensuring that and to the reunion of all Chileans.

My father respected and admired my mother and was a person who was always standing by my side, encouraging me to do more and believed in my capacity. So in that sense, my own experience was very good in becoming an empowered woman. From early on, I carried that strong message: 'You can do it.' So I never had any doubt that women can do a lot.

As a doctor, when I was minister of health and would go somewhere, little girls would come up to me and say, 'I want to be like you one day, I want to be a doctor.' Now, they tell me, 'I want to be president just like you.' All of us can dream as big as we want.

When I'm speaking of love, when I'm speaking of reversing hate, I'm speaking not only of reconciliation - even I don't use that word - I use another word in Spanish, that's called 'reencuentro' - it's not reconciliation.

In any area of the U.N. we... have to agree on certain language that can represent the same spirit, but that can be accepted by everyone.

For me, a better democracy is a democracy where women do not only have the right to vote and to elect but to be elected.

As more and more women, men and young people raise their voices and become active in local government, and more local leaders take action for the safety of women and girls, change happens.

My message to women is: Women: We can do it. We are capable of doing almost anything, but we must learn we cannot do it all at once, we need to prioritize.

The possibility of my presidential candidacy emerged spontaneously in public opinion polls. For my part, I noticed people's affection when I was doing work on the ground. I think the important thing is that my candidacy was born from citizens themselves, driven by the people and which the parties picked up favorably.

The respect for human rights is nowadays not so much a matter of having international standards, but rather questions of compliance with those standards.

The United Nations should become a proactive agent in the dissemination of democratic principles.

Gender equality will only be reached if we are able to empower women.

Violence against women in all its forms is a human rights violation. It's not something that any culture, religion or tradition propagates.

My top priority for 2012 will be to make a renewed push for women's economic empowerment and political participation.

People see I am a mother and head of a household. Today in Chile, one-third of households are run by women. They wake up, take the children to school, go to work. To them I am hope.

In artillery exercises, women always win because they're more accurate.

I'm working for the women in the world, today; that's my essential issue.

By including women in decision-making, city governments will be in a better position to fulfill their responsibility to ensure the safety of their residents, especially women and girls.

We have to make sure that women's issues are an essential element on the agendas of all heads of state, all governments.

We have had scarce investment in women... One of my tasks is that everyone spends much more on women.

I believe that if you want to fight inequality you have to do it starting at infancy.

Women's strength, women's industry, women's wisdom are humankind's greatest untapped resource. The challenge then for U.N. Women is to show our diverse constituencies how this resource can be effectively tapped in ways that benefit us all.

During my lifetime, I realized that discrimination was not accidental, that there were structural roots and causes to it. So if we wanted to change women's lives, we need to deal with those root causes.