Jacinda Ardern Quotes

Back in the early days of my political career, I was called Socialist Cindy. I just hate the nickname Cindy.

I’m the one who’s put myself into politics, so I’m the one that really should be wearing that front-facing role.

If you sit and wait to feel like you are the most confident person in the room, you are probably going to be left by yourself.

I would absolutely classify as being incredibly progressive the fact that I am the third female prime minister.

I don’t think that the next generation should fear just being who they are rather than confirming to an expectation of what they are meant to be.

I want to be a good leader, not a good lady leader. I don’t want to be known simply as the woman who gave birth.

I have a collection of ukuleles. I meant to graduate to the guitar, but I never did.

I really rebel against this idea that politics has to be a place full of ego and where you’re constantly focused on scoring hits against each one another. Yes, we need a robust democracy, but you can be strong, and you can be kind.

When I came into politics, I remember reading these scorecards of my performance, and I would routinely have these comments about not being assertive enough.

I’ll be prime minister and a mum, and Clarke will be ‘first man of fishing’ and stay-at-home dad. I think it’s fair to say that this will be a wee one that a village will raise, but we couldn’t be more excited.

Never feel like you have to tick all of the boxes on everything to be able to feel like you can do a job. I have heard it said many times before, and it is so true.

I have a partner who can be there alongside me, who’s taking up a huge part of that joint responsibility, because he’s a parent, too – he’s not a babysitter.

I definitely try not to get too caught up in putting too much of a gender or age assessment on everything – I’ve just got to get on with it.

Taking on a leadership role doesn’t mean that you only have to be personally ambitious.

We spent the election campaign really canvassing where we were as a nation, deciding who had the mandate to change that up going forward. But I think the challenge for us will be, as with any government, your actions demonstrate your legacy.

Everyone knows that I have just accepted, with short notice, the worst job in politics.

Even going out to get milk becomes a little bit challenging, just because there is a whole entourage that then travels with me for this simple thing. So I tend to try and find ways not to inconvenience a whole raft of other people, so it changes my mindset a little bit.

Issues like obesity do, as you well know, have a knock-on effect to diabetes. So we all are better off if we invest early in prevention.

We know we’ve got a problem attracting to certain areas because of the cost of living, so we’re thinking about things from how do we ensure key workers have accessible and affordable housing; also, how do we attract people into teaching as well.

We’re looking to ways to build in the responsibility we have on climate change and the way that we approach, potentially, climate change refuges in the future amongst our neighbors.

Yes, we believe in globalization and trade, but we also believe in you being able to benefit from that more. For too long, we progressives have seemed like part of the system. We need to start thinking about whether or not it’s delivering for us now.

As soon as I came in as leader, we had seven weeks to an election, so we had to be entirely focused on the job we had in front of us.

I was there when Gordon Brown basically was taking over – so right in the middle of that transition. It was fantastic; I learnt a lot.

I think that has to do with our perception of politics. There are nice politicians. There is something about this job that does take an extra bit of motivation to get out of bed in the morning.

Probably being in politics is the worst place for me to be.

If we want to make workplaces more open, we need to acknowledge logistical challenges… by being more open, it might create a path for other women.

I might be at the odd press conference with a little bit of spill on me because I’m not going to hide the imperfections of parenting. I don’t think anyone needs that.

I never, ever grew up as a young woman believing that my gender would stand in the way of doing anything I wanted.

Ultimately, I do want us to be a transformative government. I want, when we’ve left, for people to say we’re not just clean-green anymore: we’re carbon neutral, or we’re striving to be.

One of the criticisms I’ve faced over the years is that I’m not aggressive enough or assertive enough, or maybe somehow, because I’m empathetic, it means I’m weak. I totally rebel against that. I refuse to believe that you cannot be both compassionate and strong.

I’d say it was always in me – it’s just what’s required of you is very different in the moment that you become leader. When you’re part of a team, you defer, and you’re there to support your leader.

Lots of people juggle a lot of things in their personal and private lives, and I’m not unusual in that. Plenty of women have multitasked before me, and I want to acknowledge that.

Everything I’ve ever thought about doing has been, in some sense, about helping people.

This stardust won’t settle, because none of us should settle.

I thought, how do I reflect the generosity, particularly of all the iwi who gifted us names – and Te Aroha seemed to be a way.