The people are what matter to government, and a government should aim to give all the people under its jurisdiction the best possible life.

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.

But with the slow menace of a glacier, depression came on. No one had any measure of its progress; no one had any plan for stopping it. Everyone tried to get out of its way.

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

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.

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.