Frances Perkins Quotes

#1. 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.

Frances Perkins

#2. It's only when we're relaxed that the thing way down deep in all of us - call it the subconscious mind, the spirit, what you will - has a chance to well up and tell us how we shall go.

Frances Perkins

#3. Most of man's problems upon this planet, in the long history of the race, have been met and solved either partially or as a whole by experiment based on common sense and carried out with courage.

Frances Perkins

#4. The quality of his being one with the people, of having no artificial or natural barriers between him and them, made it possible for him to be a leader without ever being or thinking of being a dictator.

Frances Perkins

#5. In America, public opinion is the leader.

Frances Perkins

#6. The accusation that I am a woman is incontrovertible.

Frances Perkins

#7. Feminism means revolution and I am a revolutionist.

Frances Perkins

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

Frances Perkins

#9. The New Deal began on March 25th, 1911. The day that the Triangle factory burned.

Frances Perkins

#10. To one who believes that really good industrial conditions are the hope for a machine civilization, nothing is more heartening than to watch conference methods and education replacing police methods.

Frances Perkins

#11. 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.

Frances Perkins

#12. You can always get sympathy by using the word small. With little industries you feel as you do about a little puppy.

Frances Perkins

#13. 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.

Frances Perkins

#14. Being a woman has only bothered me in climbing trees.

Frances Perkins

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

Frances Perkins