Frances Perkins quotes

Frances Perkins was an American politician and the first woman to serve as a U.S. Cabinet member. As Secretary of Labor under President Franklin D. Roosevelt, she played a pivotal role in shaping New Deal legislation and advancing workers’ rights. She is remembered for her contributions to social security, minimum wage laws, and improved labor conditions. Here are 40 of her quotes:

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

Being a woman has only bothered me in climbing trees.

Frances Perkins

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

He didn't like concentrated responsibility. Agreement with other people who he thought were good, right minded, and trying to do the right thing by the world was almost as necessary to him as air to breathe.

Frances Perkins

I shall always be most grateful to him. He made me rediscover that I had a mind. It had lain fallow, I am afraid, since my Mount Holyoke days.

Frances Perkins

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

In America, public opinion is the leader.

Frances Perkins

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

Like many people, I was an ardent admirer of Theodore Roosevelt. ...He had recommended to the people Jacob Riis's book How the Other Half Lives. I had read it, and Theodore Roosevelt's inaugural address of 1905, and had straightaway felt that the pursuit of social justice would be my vocation.

Frances Perkins

I remember... we heard the engines and we heard the screams and rushed out and rushed over... We could see this building from Washington Square and the people had just begun to jump when we got there. They had been holding... standing in the windowsills... crowded by others behind them, the fire pressing closer and closer, the smoke closer and closer. Finally the men were trying to get out this... net to catch people... they couldn't wait any longer. They began to jump. The window was too crowded and they would jump and they hit the sidewalk. The net broke, they [fell] a terrible distance, the weight of the bodies was so great... that they broke through the net. Every one of them was killed, everybody who jumped... It was a horrifying spectacle. We... felt as though we had been part of it all. The next day people... in all parts of the city... began to mull around and gather and talk.

Frances Perkins

So that beginning with that report coming in as it did in 1915, it was laid on the table before the legislature, and by this time, Al Smith was the speaker of the House and well on the way to be governor. We had a very favorable audience and much of the legislation was enacted into law, oh, within a couple of years...

Frances Perkins

From this day forward, I will be a Doer of the Word and not as Hearer only, whenever and wherever I see the need.

Frances Perkins

Well... he'll only win that way once, I imagine. He doesn't look as if he'd be very popular with people. What I mean is, he doesn't look as if he really likes people.

Frances Perkins

His arrogance isn't what disturbs me so much as his self-centeredness... He doesn't seem to care about anything that doesn't concern him personally.

Frances Perkins

Gentlemen... let me make a plain statement. As I see it, the Labor Commission is duty-bound always to consider two things about every recommendation. One: what will this provide in the way of health, comfort, decency and security? Two: what will it cost?

Frances Perkins

I would not be where I am today if it were not for you and others like you. ...I do not regard you as paying tribute to me personally, but to Frances Perkins as a symbol of the genuine desire to bring happiness to those who have it not in their own power. So that industry may bear down kindly instead of bitterly. ...I promise to use the brains I have to meet problems with intelligence and courage. ...I promise that I will be candid about what I know, of the Labor Department or of the state of industry in this state and in country.

Frances Perkins

Would you leave me free to do what I think is best for the Labor Department, Franklin? I'd try to keep you informed, but I wouldn't always be able to... [D]irect unemployment relief, a program of public works, minimum wage and hour laws, unemployment and old age insurance, abolition of child labor... These things need doing no matter who is Secretary of Labor.

Frances Perkins

I thought witch-hunting was a thing of the past, but that's what this 'red-baiting' immigration squad is doing. They see communists behind every foreign name.

Frances Perkins

I know what horror tales you've been hearing from manufacturers... They've told you they can't possibly operate under a forty-eight hour law. Well, they said the same thing twelve years ago when the Fifty-Four Hour Bill was under consideration. So, gentlemen, let us look at the facts. ...[T]here have been fewer industrial accidents, because the workers do not so often become careless through fatigue. Gentlemen, there is every reason to believe things will improve still further when the working day is shorter. ...A million women will be affected by the law... you don't need to fear employers... [T]hose million women have suffrage... Let this bill that means so much to them go to a vote. They'll be grateful to you!

Frances Perkins

One of the girls who was among my best friends came from a poverty-stricken home. Her family was delightful and I used to wonder how such things could happen...

Frances Perkins

[Florence Kelley's speech] first opened my mind to the necessity for and the possibility of the work which became my vocation.

Frances Perkins

If facts were to be found, I was to devise ways to prevent it or overcome it either by social representation or by legislation at the municipal or state level. ...Ten cent lodging houses, employment agencies, the offices of the Philadelphia political "gangs," and the two police courts all became my haunts...

Frances Perkins