Being a woman has only bothered me in climbing trees.

Out of our first century of national life we evolved the ethical principle that it was not right or just that an honest and industrious man should live and die in misery. He was entitled to some degree of sympathy and security. Our conscience declared against the honest workman's becoming a pauper, but our eyes told us that he very often did.

I came to Washington to work for God, FDR, and the millions of forgotten, plain common workingmen.

It is not the nature of man, as I see it, ever to be quite satisfied with what he has in life.... Contentment tends to breed laxity, but a healthy discontent keeps us alert to the changing needs of our time.

This leads to a question - if a great many people are for a certain project, is it necessarily right? If the vast majority is for it, is it even more certainly right? This, to be sure, is one of the tricky points of democracy. The minority often turns out to be right, and though one believes in the efficacy of the democratic process, one has also to recognize that the demand of the many for a particular project at a particular time may mean only disaster.

In America, public opinion is the leader

The door might not be opened to a woman again for a long, long time, and I had a kind of duty to other women to walk in and sit down on the chair that was offered, and so establish the right of others long hence and far distant in geography to sit in the high seats.