...there are persons who seem to have overcome obstacles and by character and perseverance to have risen to the top. But we have no record of the numbers of able persons who fall by the wayside, persons who, with enough encouragement and opportunity, might make great contributions.

The higher one climbs, the lonelier one is.

... education fails in so far as it does not stir in students a sharp awareness of their obligations to society and furnish at least a few guideposts pointing toward the implementation of these obligations.

We spoke of ourselves as "emancipated" when we got the vote. Yet we are still slaves to the superficial and the superfluous. We are concerned with the length of our skirts, with the latest lipstick, with the newest thrill in hats. We are impressed by advertisements that insist we must be alluring; we must adopt a time-consuming coiffure, we must spend hours with the "beautician," we must attend fashion shows. As long as women are preoccupied with nonessentials we shall be afflicted with infantilism, passivity, and the eventual disillusionment that results from trivial, unproductive lives.

I complacently accepted the social order in which I was brought up. I probably would have continued in my complacency if the happynecessity of self-support had not fallen to my lot; if self-support had not deepened and widened my contacts and my experience.

One of the baffling things about life is that the purposes of institutions may be ideal, while their administration, dependent upon the faults and weaknesses of human beings, may be bad.

It is my conviction that in general women are more snobbish and class conscious than men and that these ignoble traits are a product of men's attitude toward women and women's passive acceptance of this attitude.