How we cite our quotes: (Sentence)
Quote #1
Instead of saying now that I hope you will all go forth from this ivory tower of college into the Real World and forge a triumphant career or at least help your husband to and keep our country strong and be a success in everything – instead of talking about power, what if I talked like a woman right here in public? (17)
So… she doesn't hope that the new graduates go on to lead successful, fulfilling lives? Maybe we should keep reading…
Quote #2
What if I said what I hope for you is first, if – only if – you want kids, I hope you have them. Not hordes of them. A couple, enough. I hope they're beautiful. I hope you and they have enough to eat, and a place to be warm and clean in, and friends, and work you like doing. (20-24)
Reality check, courtesy of Ursula K. Le Guin. Not everyone is lucky enough to have those things, and she's simply wishing them a life filled with happiness. Perhaps being happy is the ultimate success.
Quote #3
Success is somebody else's failure. Success is the American Dream we can keep dreaming because most people in most places, including thirty million of ourselves, live wide awake in the terrible reality of poverty. No, I do not wish you success. I don't even want to talk about it. I want to talk about failure. (28-32)
That's a pretty pivotal statement: "success is somebody else's failure." Is it possible to succeed without that being true? Knowing what we do about the rest of the speech, is Le Guin suggesting that experiencing failure would lead to succeeding? (And is this like a "which came first: the chicken or the egg" type thing?)
Quote #4
What I hope for you, for all my sisters and daughters, brothers and sons, is that you will be able to live there, in the dark place. To live in the place that our rationalizing culture of success denies, calling it a place of exile, uninhabitable, foreign. (38-39)
She's not really advocating for people to be miserable, although reading this sentence on its own could lead you to believe that. But when she continues later on towards the end of the speech, she clarifies that the "dark place" is where souls are grown. So, basically, what doesn't kill you makes you stronger.
Quote #5
So what I hope for you is that you live there not as prisoners, ashamed of being women, consenting captives of a psychopathic social system, but as natives. That you will be at home there, keep house there, be your own mistress, with a room of your own. That you will do your work there, whatever you're good at, art or science or tech or running a company or sweeping under the beds, and when they tell you that it's second-class work because a woman is doing it, I hope you tell them to go to hell and while they're going to give you equal pay for equal time. I hope you live without the need to dominate, and without the need to be dominated. I hope you are never victims, but I hope you have no power over other people. And when you fail, and are defeated, and in pain, and in the dark, then I hope you will remember that darkness is your country, where you live, where no wars are fought and no wars are won, but where the future is. (63-68)
TL/DR: She hopes that women will embrace whatever role they've chosen for themselves, and be good at what they do while they earn equal pay as their male counterparts. She wants them to find a way to live their lives without being victims or despots, and always remember that they are strong because they are women. Got it.