Margot Lee Shetterly

Without imagination, I don't think there's any progress.

— Margot Lee Shetterly

“each of us should be allowed to rise as far as our talent and hard work can take us. The”

— Margot Lee Shetterly

“black people frequently disqualified themselves even without the WHITES ONLY sign in view”

— Margot Lee Shetterly

“They wore their professional clothes like armor. They wielded their work like weapons, warding off the presumption of inferiority because they were…

— Margot Lee Shetterly

“Serendipity happens when a well-trained mind looking for one thing encounters something else: the unexpected.”

— Margot Lee Shetterly

My dad joined Langley in 1964 as a co-op student and retired in 2004 an internationally respected climate scientist.

— Margot Lee Shetterly

“At the beginning of a decade when everything was beginning to seem possible, nothing seemed impossible.”

— Margot Lee Shetterly

“Expertise in a subfield was the key to a successful career as an engineer, and expertise was becoming a necessity for the…

— Margot Lee Shetterly

There is so much talent among our young people; I hope the women in 'Hidden Figures' inspire them.

— Margot Lee Shetterly

You don't get the good without the bad, but you really do have to see it all in order to make progress.

— Margot Lee Shetterly

I feel like, in a lot of ways, 'Hidden Figures' is the book that I wrote and have been waiting to read…

— Margot Lee Shetterly

For too long, history has imposed a binary condition on its black citizens: either nameless or renowned, menial or exceptional, passive recipients…

— Margot Lee Shetterly

“But years and miles away from home could never attenuate the city's hold on my identity, and the more I explored places…

— Margot Lee Shetterly

As much as I think it is necessary and desirable for white people to have an expanded view of the black American…

— Margot Lee Shetterly

“As fantastical as America’s space ambitions might have seemed, sending a man into space was starting to feel like a straightforward task…

— Margot Lee Shetterly

During World War II, hundreds of thousands of people actually - and among them many African-American - migrated to the Hampton Roads…

— Margot Lee Shetterly

How do we fill the need for technology workers, people who have computer skills and math and science skills? How do we…

— Margot Lee Shetterly

That's what 'Star Trek' was: We don't know how to make an ideal society, but we're going to portray that, and then…

— Margot Lee Shetterly

My dad worked with Mary Jackson very closely at one point. I knew Katherine Johnson as well. They were all part of…

— Margot Lee Shetterly

“You can't leave the show," King told Nichols. "We are there because you are there." Black people have been imagined in the…

— Margot Lee Shetterly

“Early in her career at Langley, Dorthy Lee was interviewed for the Daily Press, in all probability by Virginia Biggins, the female…

— Margot Lee Shetterly

“The jobs, the housing, the relationships, the routines --- so many aspects of life that had been cut out of the whole…

— Margot Lee Shetterly

“It had always been Katherine Goble's great talent to be in the right place at the right time.”

— Margot Lee Shetterly

“Most of all, she went out of her way to provide them with the kinds of experiences that would expand their understanding…

— Margot Lee Shetterly

I was surprised how little I knew about the significant contributions to aviation that had happened right there in Hampton, Virginia.

— Margot Lee Shetterly

As a callow 18-year-old leaving for college, I'd seen my home town as a mere launching pad for a life in worldlier…

— Margot Lee Shetterly

“War, technology, and social progress; it seemed that the second two always came with the first. The NACA’s work—more intense and”

— Margot Lee Shetterly

The success of 'Hidden Figures' proves that people are interested in, hungry for, stories about transcendent human experiences.

— Margot Lee Shetterly

History happens as soon as I pick up my coffee cup - it happened 30 seconds ago. It's history.

— Margot Lee Shetterly

“It was the engineer who determined what problems to investigate, designed the experiments, and defined the assignments for the mathematicians.”

— Margot Lee Shetterly

I knew a lot of black scientists, engineers, and mathematicians, and female mathematicians and engineers, women of all backgrounds. So this idea…

— Margot Lee Shetterly

You can't change history. These things happened the way they did. What you can change is how you look at it and…

— Margot Lee Shetterly

“Of course, while Katherine took the accolades in stride, she never took the work for granted. Not a morning dawned that she…

— Margot Lee Shetterly

Five of my father's seven siblings made their bones as engineers or technologists, and some of his best buddies - David Woods,…

— Margot Lee Shetterly

A lot of times, when you have a story of minorities in America, it's always this super, oppositional thing. It's segregation, it's…

— Margot Lee Shetterly

Katherine Johnson actually integrated the public university in West Virginia. And Mary Jackson had to petition state courts to be allowed to…

— Margot Lee Shetterly

“But having the independence of mind and the strength of personality to defend your work in front of the most incisive aeronautical…

— Margot Lee Shetterly

“From the fissure of their ever-present double consciousness sprang the idea of the double victory, articulated by James Thompson in his letter…

— Margot Lee Shetterly

I remember 'The Norfolk Journal and Guide,' which is a black newspaper that still exists, but it was really influential, as you…

— Margot Lee Shetterly