To celebrate UN Ambassador and actress Emma Watson’s 25th Birthday today we’ve got together her most powerful and inspirational quotes that every woman should live by…
1. “I don’t have perfect teeth. I’m not stick thin. I want to be the person who feels great in her body and can say that she loves it and doesn’t want to change anything.”
2. “Becoming yourself is really hard and confusing, and it’s a process. It’s often not cool to be the person who puts themselves out there.”
3. “We [women] really damage our own confidence when we put ourselves down, so I try not to.”
4. “As much as someone can tell you things, you have to go out there and make your own mistakes in order to learn.”
5. “I’m going to do what I want to do. I’m going to be who I really am. I’m going to figure out what that is.”
6. “I keep telling myself that I’m a human being who’s not made to look like a doll.”
7. “We [women] have unbelievably high expectations of ourselves, when actually we’re human beings and our bodies have a function.”
8. “I don’t want other people to decide who I am. I want to decide that for myself.”
9. “I think that it is very important if you know what you want, understand where you are heading towards, and try your best to get it. It is only when we use our hearts to do it, and fall in love with what we are doing, then can we really get real determination.”
10. “Girls should never be afraid to be smart.”
11. “I have realized that fighting for women’s rights has too often become synonymous with man-hating. If there is one thing I know for certain, it is that this has to stop.”
12. “All I can do is follow my instincts because I’ll never please everyone.”
13. “Don’t feel stupid if you don’t like what everyone else pretends to love.”
14. “There’s nothing interesting about looking perfect – you lose the point. You want what you’re wearing to say something about you, about who you are.”
15. I'm excited about the ageing process. I'm more interested in women who aren't perfect. They're more compelling."
16. “We [women] really need to support each other, we really do. So, I guess I would say be brave enough to acknowledge that things are not there yet and support each other.”
17. "I think it is right I am paid the same as my male counterparts.”
18. "Feminism is not here to dictate to you. It’s not prescriptive, it’s not dogmatic. All we are here to do is give you a choice. If you want to run for Prime Minister, you can. If you don’t, that’s wonderful, too. Shave your armpits, don’t shave them, wear flats one day, heels the next.”
19. “The saddest thing for a girl to do is to dumb herself down for a guy.”
20. “I feel like young girls are told that they have to be a princess and fragile. It’s bullshit. I identify much more with being a warrior – a fighter. If I was going to be a princess, I’d be a warrior princess.”
21. “I’ve probably earned the right to screw up a few times. I don’t want fear of failure to stop me doing what I really care about.”
22. “I truly, truly believe that beauty comes from within.”
23. “There’s nothing wrong with being afraid. It’s not the absence of fear, it’s overcoming it. Sometimes you’ve got to blast through and have faith.”
24. “Beauty is not long hair, skinny legs, tanned skin or perfect teeth. Believe me. Beauty is the face of who cried and now smiles, beauty is the scar on your knee since you fell when you were a kid, beauty is the circles when love doesn’t let you sleep, beauty is the expression on the face when the alarm rings in the morning, it’s the melted makeup when you have a shower, it’s the laughter when you make a joke you’re the only one who can understand, beauty is meeting his gaze and stopping understanding, beauty is your gaze when you see him, it’s when you cry for all you paranoias, beauty is the lines marked by time. Beauty is what we feel in the inside which also shows outside us. Beauty is the marks the life leaves on us, all the kicks and the caresses the memories leave us. Beauty is letting yourself live.”
25. “It's not the word [feminism] that it's important. It's the idea and ambition behind it.”