Leadership Quote by Barbara Mikulski

Mikulski’s line is built like a bridge: it starts with the small plank of individual agency, then locks it into the steel span of collective power. “Each one of us” flatters without inflating; it invites people who feel peripheral to politics to see themselves as legitimate actors. But it’s also a quiet reality check. One person can “make a difference” - a phrase roomy enough to include everything from voting to calling a senator to showing up at a school board meeting - yet the second sentence tightens the claim. Change, the big structural stuff, is plural. It requires “together.”

The intent is classic democratic mobilization, especially from a career legislator who understood how outcomes are manufactured: coalition math, turnout, committee work, and the unglamorous grind that turns moral urgency into a bill that can pass. The subtext is a rebuttal to two modern temptations at once: the lone-hero fantasy (politics as individual purity or personal brand) and the nihilistic shrug (my action won’t matter). Mikulski offers a middle path: your move counts, but it counts most when it links up.

Context matters because Mikulski’s public life was shaped by fights where coalition wasn’t a slogan; it was the only tool that worked - women’s rights, health policy, funding battles, the everyday defense of institutions that don’t trend until they fail. The quote’s simplicity is the point. It’s meant to travel: from campaign rally to church basement to kitchen table, a portable antidote to political isolation.