In March, The Federalist brought you a free, downloadable collection of original art prints: inspirational motivational posters featuring quotes from girlboss Vice President Kamala Harris, because the time to be inspired is every day. Shortly after that, we started compiling a list for a second set of inspirational posters, adding to the list whenever we heard an especially profound quote from the vice president.
We thought it would be a long-term project, something to slowly accumulate. A few short months later, we realized she had provided material so prolifically, we owed it to her (and you) not to wait any longer. After all, as the vice president has a habit of saying, “there is great significance to passage of time.” Enjoy this aesthetic collection of wisdom and insight, and may it remind you to work together to be unburdened by what you believe are your highest priorities to take seriously, and then move forward.
In a “Face the Nation” interview that aired Sunday, Harris reminded us to believe what we believed we believe.
“I think that, to be very honest with you, I do believe that we should have rightly believed what we certainly believe that certain issues are just settled,” she told Robert Costa in response to a question about whether Democrats “failed” in not “codify[ing] Roe v. Wade over the past five decades.”
During a speech in Louisiana in March, the vice president waxed poetic about time and its passing. “We were all doing a tour of the library here and talking about the significance of the passage of time, right? The significance of the passage of time, so when you think about it there is great significance to passage of time,” she intoned. “There is such great significance to the passage of time.”
Discussing Covid aid to Jamaica later that month, Harris showed further mastery of the rhetorical device of repetition.
“For Jamaica, one of the issues that has been presented as an issue that is economic in the way its impact has been the pandemic,” she said. “We will assist Jamaica in Covid recovery by assisting in terms of the recovery efforts in Jamaica that have been essential to, I believe, what is necessary to strengthen not only the issue of public health but also the economy.”
Harris showed her talent at sounding like the voiceover from a theme park spaceship simulator when she reminded us that “Space is exciting. It spurs our imaginations, and it forces us to ask big questions. Space, it affects us all, and it connects us all.”
And don’t forget the time she inspired us all in true “it takes a village” fashion: “When we talk about the children of the community, they are a children of the community.”
She urged us to work together during a speech about climate in May to political leaders from Southeast Asia. “We will work together and continue to work together to address these issues, to tackle these challenges, and to work together as we continue to work, operating from the new norms, rules, and agreements that we will convene to work together on, to galvanize global action,” she said, before finishing strong with the declaration, “and I know we will work on this together,” just in case you weren’t listening the first (or fifth) time.
She assured us of her priorities in an interview with Dana Bash, explaining, “I think that there can be no higher priority than what we have been clear is our highest priority.”
And in another speech, Harris told us how serious she was: “We got to take this stuff seriously, as seriously as you are because you have been forced to have to take it seriously.”
Finally, speaking to a conference of the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials in June, Harris offered a stirring reminder: “Despite the odds and the obstacles, we push to move forward, that we are guided by what we see, that can be, unburdened by what has been.”
