I was perfectly certain that I had nothing to offer of an individual nature and that my only chance of doing my duty as the wife of a public official was to do exactly as the majority of women were doing.

Someone once asked me what I regarded as the three most important requirements for happiness. My answer was: A feeling that you have been honest with yourself and those around you; a feeling that you have done the best you could both in your personal life and in your work; and the ability to love others.

Sometimes it is extremely good for you to forget that there is anything in the world which needs to be done, and to do some particular thing that you want to do. Every human being needs a certain amount of time in which he can be peaceful.

The things you refuse to meet today always come back at you later on, usually under circumstances which make the decision twice as difficult as it originally was.

It is not that you set the individual apart from society but that you recognize in any society that the individual must have rights that are guarded.

About the only value the story of my life may have is to show that one can, even without any particular gifts, overcome obstacles that seem insurmountable if one is willing to face the fact that they must be overcome.

The leisure class is one in which individuals have sufficient economic security and sufficient leisure to find opportunity for a variety of satisfactions in life.