Rise Above

This month's challenge Rise Above is inspired by women in the sciences. Each participant will receive a quote from a woman who has advanced the participation of women in the sciences. Although we are offering this challenge alongside Legendarium Ladies April, your response does not have to feature a female character or women in science, although special stamps are available for those who take on these extra challenges. (Also--please feel free to use your challenge quote in combination with this month's wonderful Legendarium Ladies April prompts, or write or include a poem as part of Poetry Month!) You may use all or part of your quote in any way that you choose in responding to the challenge. Challenge responses must be posted to the SWG archive by May 10 to be eligible for a stamp.

If you wish to participate in this month's challenge, leave a comment on our our Dreamwidth or LiveJournal, drop us an ask on our tumblr, or email us at moderator@silmarillionwritersguild.org. We will send your quote to you as soon as possible.

This challenge opened in April 2018 .

Prompts

Choose your prompt from the collection below.

View Prompts

• "Patience is a good remedy." ~ Maria Sibylla Merian
• "Reserve your right to think, for even to think wrongly is better than not to think at all." ~ Hypatia of Alexandria
• "You cannot hope to build a better world without improving the individuals. To that end, each of us must work for his own improvement and, at the same time, share a general responsibility for all humanity, our particular duty being to aid those to whom we think we can be most useful." ~ Marie Curie
• "Every theory is a self-fulfilling prophecy that orders experience into the framework it provides." ~ Ruth Hubbard Grundy
• "Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it's the only thing that ever has." ~ Margaret Mead
• "When you choose your fields of labor, go where nobody else is willing to go." ~ Mary Lyon
• "In Utopia that is to say, in a world in which the power structure was such that both men and women equally could be represented clothed or unclothed in a variety of poses and positions without any subconscious implications of dominance or submission in a world of total and, so to speak, unconscious equality, the female nude would not be problematic. In our world, it is." ~ Linda Nochlin
• "First of all, you have to love what you do, because if there is any other reason for going into it, it won't work. Secondly, you have to be yourself." ~ Edith Flanigen
• "There simply aren't enough capable men today to fill all the managerial jobs." ~ Felice Schwarz
• "The man's world must become a man's and a woman's world. Why are we afraid?" ~ Martha Carey Thomas
• "We don't necessarily always agree, but hopefully we make each other think, and that's what matters." ~ Vanessa Kerry
• "Above the titles of wife and mother, which, although dear, are transitory and accidental, there is the title human being, which precedes and out-ranks every other." ~ Mary Ashton Livermore
• "The world would be a better place if more engineers, like me, hated technology. The stuff I design, if I’m successful, nobody will ever notice. Things will just work." ~ Radia Pearlman
• "Any girl can be glamorous. All she has to do is stand still and look stupid." ~ Hedy Lamarr
• "If the system is broken, my inclination is to fix it rather than to fight it. I have faith in the process of the law, and if it is carried out fairly, I can live with the results, whatever they may be." ~ Sonia Sotomayor
• "I like to think of mathematicians as forming a nation of our own without distinctions of geographical origin, race, creed, sex, age or even time... all dedicated to the most beautiful of the arts and sciences." ~ Julia Robinson
• "Science makes people reach selflessly for truth and objectivity; it teaches people to accept reality, with wonder and admiration, not to mention the deep awe and joy that the natural order of things brings to the true scientist."  ~ Lise Meitner
• "I do not allow myself to be overcome by hopelessness, no matter how tough the situation. I believe that if you just do your little bit without thinking of the bigness of what you stand against, if you turn to the enlargement of your own capacities, just that itself creates new potential." ~ Vandana Shiva
• "Living democracy grows like a tree, from the bottom up." ~ Vandana Shiva
• "Like in nature, I like things which are based on a few simple principles, even though their manifestation can be very rich." ~ Fabiola Gianotti
• "Those who have learned to walk on the threshold of the unknown worlds, by means of what are commonly termed par excellence the exact sciences, may then, with the fair white wings of imagination, hope to soar further into the unexplored amidst which we live." ~ Ada Lovelace
• "I didn’t have a fellow at the time so I had to do it all by myself. I had to appreciate that as a woman I was strong, complete, adequate." ~ Bette Nesmith Graham
• "It is not just that it is more difficult for women to succeed; they get treated much more harshly if ever they mess up." ~ Mary Beard
• "We have to be more reflective about what power is, what it is for, and how it is measured. To put it another way, if women are not perceived to be fully within the structures of power, surely it is power that we need to redefine rather than women?" ~ Mary Beard