100 Quotes by Emma Watson

Emma Watson is an English actress known for her portrayal of Hermione Granger in the Harry Potter film series. Beyond her successful acting career, Watson has become an influential advocate for gender equality and women's rights. She has taken on roles in various projects that empower women and challenge gender stereotypes, and she is known for her work as a UN Women Goodwill Ambassador and her involvement in the HeForShe campaign, which encourages men to take an active role in promoting gender equality. Watson's dedication to social issues, combined with her talents as an actress, has helped her become a role model for young people, inspiring them to use their platform for positive change and to actively engage in social and humanitarian causes.

Emma Watson Quotes


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.

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If I had it my way, I would have just kept it short forever. Of course, men like long hair. There's no two ways about it. The majority of the boys around me were like, 'Why did you do that? That's such an error.' And I was like, 'Well, honestly, I don't really care what you think!' I've never felt so confident as I did with short hair - I felt really good in my own skin.

Gender equality, historically has been predominantly a women's movement for women. But I think the impact of gender inequality and how it's affecting men hasn't really been addressed.

Both men and women should feel free to be sensitive. Both men and women should feel free to be strong... It is time that we all perceive gender on a spectrum not as two opposing sets of ideals.

For the record, feminism by definition is: 'The belief that men and women should have equal rights and opportunities. It is the theory of the political, economic and social equality of the sexes.'

My idea of sexy is that less is more. The less you reveal the more people can wonder.

I don't want other people to decide who I am. I want to decide that for myself.

Hermione uses all these big long tongue twister words. I don't know what she's going on about half the time!

Feeling beautiful has nothing to do with what you look like. I promise.

All I can do is follow my instincts, because I'll never please everyone.

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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.

I have felt for the last 10 years I have had this battle; I've been fighting so hard to have an education. It's been this uphill struggle. I was Warner Bros' pain in the butt. I was their scheduling conflict. I was the one who made life difficult.

I have collections of quirky things from places I've been to, like a set of Russian dolls.

If not me- who?, If not now- when?

If I could wear any label forever it would be Burberry. It covers a huge span of stuff. You can't go wrong with a classic trench and a pair of jeans.

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.

I truly, truly believe that beauty is something that comes from within.

Believe in yourself and go for it.

I keep telling myself that I'm a human being, an imperfect human being who's not made to look like a doll, and that who I am as a person is more important than whether at that moment I have a nice figure.

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Don't feel stupid if you don't like what everyone else pretends to love.

It's important to read because it's really good for your vocabulary. It's really good for your imagination. I enjoy reading because I find it relaxing.

Feminism is equality: politically; culturally; socially; economically. That's it, that simple.

I am from Britain and think it is right that as a woman I am paid the same as my male counterparts. I think it is right that I should be able to make decisions about my own body. I think it is right that women be involved on my behalf in the policies and decision-making of my country. I think it is right that socially I am afforded the same respect as men. But sadly I can say that there is no one country in the world where all women can expect to receive these rights.

Becoming yourself is really hard and confusing, and it's a process. I was completely the eager beaver in school, I was the girl in the front of the class who was the first person to put her hand up, and it's often not cool to be the person that puts themself out there, and I've often gotten teased mercilessly, but I found that ultimately if you truly pour your heart into what you believe in - even if it makes you vulnerable - amazing things can and will happen.

Hermione is so close to who I am as a person that I've never really had to research a role. I'm literally rediscovering what it means to be an actress.

I want to be normal. I really want anonymity.

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 President, you can. If you don’t, that’s wonderful, too. I’m lucky I was raised to believe that my opinion at the dinner table was valuable. My mum and I spoke as loudly as my brothers.

Young girls are told you have to be the delicate princess. Hermione taught them that you can be the warrior.

I don't want the fear of failure to stop me from doing what I really care about.

But it's a journey and the sad thing is you only learn from experience, so as much as someone can tell you things, you have to go out there and make your own mistakes in order to learn.

I've found that if ultimately, if you truly pour your heart into what you believe in, even if it makes you vulnerable, amazing things can and will happen.

It is my belief that there is a greater understanding than ever that women need to be equal participants in our homes, in our societies, in our governments, and in our workplaces.

Girls should never be afraid to be smart

If men don’t have to be aggressive in order to be accepted, women won’t feel compelled to be submissive. If men don’t have to control, women won’t have to be controlled.

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.

Really I was open-minded about doing anything, but the one thing I didn't want to do was get myself into a corset, because I was worried I'd never get out again.

I feel like young girls are told, I don’t know, that they have to be this kind of 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 definitely.

I used to look back at pictures and cringe but actually I'm quite proud that I've had fun with fashion and don't always look perfect. The only regret I have is when I look at something I wore when I was very young and it obviously looks like it belonged to someone else.

Men think it's a women's word. But what it means is that you believe in equality, and if you stand for equality, then you're a feminist. Sorry to tell you. You're a feminist. You're a feminist. That's it.

If you believe in equality, you're a feminist. Sorry to tell you.

There's nothing interesting about looking perfect.

My friends are all really nice about my fame, they're just curious really, they ask lots of questions.

People sometimes talk about me as being a brand, having a strategy and whatever else. I wish. Seriously. I wish I had it together enough to have a strategy. But it's so instinctual. It usually comes down to two things: the person I'm working with - the director is really important to me - and a line in a script.

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.

I do worry about the expectation to look a certain way.

The saddest thing for a girl to do is to dumb herself down for a guy.

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. These things are so irrelevant and surface to what it is all really about, and I wish people wouldn't get caught up in that. We want to empower women to do exactly what they want, to be true to themselves, to have the opportunities to develop.

If I've learned anything, it's really just to stop trying to find answers and certainties.

Don't be ashamed if you don't like what others pretend to love

I do things in my own way, but I've never felt any need to rebel.

I like Valentino a lot - they never use actresses in their campaigns.

The most embarrassing one is that I had no idea - and please excuse me - that you guys call a condom a rubber. My version of a rubber is an eraser. I've done that - very loudly asked for a rubber and people have given me strange looks. That was embarrassing!

I just loved performing. It just made me feel alive. It's scary, but that's part of it. I think it's important to have that extra adrenaline. It gives you that extra zing.

I like men with quick wit, good conversation and a great sense of humour. I love banter. I want a man to like me for me - I want him to be authentic.

We really damage our own confidence when we put ourselves down, so I try not to.

I really believe that you have to earn things. I don't feel comfortable unless I have worked really hard.

I'm a perfectionist, so my bossiness definitely comes out.

Jodie Foster did it, Natalie Portman did it. I think it's entirely possible to juggle university with filming... I actually think going to university will make me a better actress. The experience of living like that, working to deadlines, living with other students. It's all the things I want. There are actresses who don't know about things like doing their own laundry and getting a bus. I'm not going to be like that. For me, this is just the beginning. I've only shown a little bit of what I can do. There is so much more to come.

A lot of children of this generation have their entire lives made public before they have a say about what they would want. I think it should always be a choice. I love social media, and I love what it can do and how it brings people together, but used in the wrong way, it's incredibly dangerous.

You might be thinking who is this Harry Potter girl? And what is she doing up on stage at the UN. It's a good question and trust me I have been asking myself the same thing. I don't know if I am qualified to be here. All I know is that I care about this problem. And I want to make it better.

There's a Theodore Roosevelt speech about the importance of being in the arena, whether you fail or you succeed, or you make a complete idiot of yourself, as long as you're doing the best with what you have, using whatever knowledge you have to bring to the table at that moment. And you continue to keep learning. I think my mistakes have made me much stronger. It's nice to know that things don't ultimately break you; that you need to go there to know.

The human race is like a bird and it needs both wings to be able to fly. And, at the moment, one of is wings is clipped an we're never going to be able to fly as high.

As a child, I loved being onstage. I loved singing, I loved the lights, I loved the adrenaline. I even loved learning lines. I was completely obsessive.

I find the whole concept of being 'sexy' embarrassing and confusing. If I do a photo-shoot, people desperately want to change me - dye my hair blonder, pluck my eyebrows, give me a fringe. Then there's the choice of clothes. I know everyone wants a picture of me in a mini-skirt. But that's not me.

Ignoring fame was my rebellion, in a funny way. I was insistent on being normal and doing normal things. It probably wasn't advisable to go to college in America and room with a complete stranger. And it probably wasn't wise to share a bathroom with eight other people in a coed dorm. Looking back, that was crazy.

Women share this planet 50/50 and they are underrepresented, their potential astonishingly untapped.

I never wear pigtails, I wear plaits.

People associate feminism with hate - with man hate - and that's really negative. I don't think that's what feminism is about at all - it's really positive. I think that's why women became reluctant to use the word.

Dan Radcliffe and Rupert Grint to me are like a pair of warm-hearted brothers.

People who are close to me know, they so know that there were days when I was so tired that I would fall asleep anywhere. The onset photographer has pictures of me falling asleep everywhere. Like on chairs, on the floor, in the middle of a set, all curled up. There were times when crew members didn't know where to find me, but they knew I'd be curled up in a ball somewhere.

We had fun just messing around and being awkward like they would be awkward. There's always that stage in a friendship when you wonder whether it could be more.

We want to end gender inequality, and to do this, we need everyone involved...We want to try to galvanize as many men and boys as possible to be advocates for change and we don't just want to talk about it. We want to try and make sure that it's tangible.

It was unbelievable seeing me as an action figure! In a few months, toddlers all around the country will be biting my head off!

I really want to write a novel. I also want to learn to play the mandolin.

I think women are scared of feeling powerful and strong and brave sometimes.

People don't really understand, but having people stare, and point, and take pictures, even if it is in a positive framework, is quite isolating; there's no two ways about it. You feel a little bit, you know, freakish.

I'm a real Londoner. We have very grey weather in London, and I think it encourages a very eclectic and crazy fashion sense. I mix high-street stuff with more high-end fashion and vintage.

I'm finally able to tell you... that I will be playing Belle in Disney's new live-action Beauty and the Beast! It was such a big part of my growing up, it almost feels surreal that I'll get to dance to 'Be Our Guest' and sing 'Something There'. My six year old self is on the ceiling - heart bursting. Time to start some singing lessons. I can't wait for you to see it.

We don't often talk about men being imprisoned by gender stereotypes but I can see that that they are and that when they are free, things will change for women as a natural consequence.

I stole a piece of the chess set on the first film. I took a piece of the treasure out of Bellatrix's vault on this film. And I've taken my wand and I've got my cloak.

IN MY NERVOUSNESS FOR THIS SPEECH AND MY MOMENTS OF DOUBT, I'VE TOLD MYSELF FIRMLY, 'IF NOT ME, WHO? IF NOT NOW, WHEN?'

Women have a natural tendency to want to nurture and take care of men. You always think that the guy is going to end up coming around and that you’re going to be the one that saves him - like the Oasis song.

I've never wanted to grow up too fast. I wanted to wear a sports bra until I was 22! ... The allure of being sexy never really held any excitement for me. I've never been in a terrible rush to be seen as a woman.

I think it's so much sexier to be understated. It's more intriguing to be sexy in a less obvious way.

If anyone else played Hermione, it would actually kill me.

In terms of men I fancy, I think the actor James Franco is gorgeous. But I find it odd to be described as a sex symbol myself.

I think I'm actually in denial that I'm famous, it only sinks in when people crowd in the streets. My friends treat me like a regular person, which is what I wanted.

Don't let anyone tell you what you can or cannot do, or cannot achieve. Do. Not. Allow. It.

I think our fears find us and force us to confront them over and over again.

The difficulty for me is that I'm interested in so many different things. I could never really imagine myself doing one thing, and I'm pretty sure that I'll end up doing four or five different things.

Harry Potter's like Santa Clause: something you can't see but wish was real so badly that you end up believing in it.

Men, I would like to take this opportunity to extend your formal invitation. … Gender equality is your issue, too. … I've seen young men suffering from mental illness, unable to ask for help, for fear it would make them less of a men—or less of a man. I've seen men made fragile and insecure by a distorted sense of what constitutes male success. Men don't have the benefits of equality, either.

And I always keep cards people send me. I have a whole wall covered with them.

I thought, If people are going to write about what I'm wearing, then I would wear young British designers who need the publicity.

It's difficult on my dating life, because anyone I get photographed with is automatically my boyfriend. So it just makes it look as if I've had, like, 6,000 boyfriends!

The reality is that if we do nothing it will take 75 years, or for me to be nearly a hundred before women can expect to be paid the same as men for the same work.

We are tapping into what the world wants: to be a part of change.

I love fashion. I think it's so important, because it's how you show yourself to the world.

I'm a multidimensional person and that's the freedom of fashion: that you're able to reinvent yourself through how you dress and how you cut your hair or whatever.

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 she loves it and doesn't want to change anything.

I decided I was a feminist and this seemed uncomplicated to me. But my recent research has shown me that feminism has become an unpopular word. Apparently I am among the ranks of women whose expressions are seen as too strong, too aggressive, isolating, anti-men and, unattractive.

I'm a feminist, but I think that romance has been taken away a bit for my generation. I think what people connect with in novels is this idea of an overpowering, encompassing love - and it being more important and special than anything and everything else.

Who here actually thinks I would do 50 Shades of Grey as a movie? Like really. For real. In real life.

Social media, it's a minefield! Technology is moving so fast right now. Everyone is scrambling around trying to understand what it means to have an avatar, how to live our lives on the internet, what it means for privacy, for citizens of a political universe. I think that we're trying to find rules now, as we speak, and it's difficult. But, like everything, the internet is an incredibly powerful force that needs governing - not to restrict our freedom, but to protect people.

I'm a feminist, but I think that romance has been taken away a bit for my generation.

Steve Jobs has a great speech where he talks about how the wrong turns in his life truly set him on the path that he needed to be on. Anyway, what do I do? I bake. I'm pretty competitive about my chocolate chip banana bread. I don't think anyone can believe how good it is. It's really on another level.

I really love animals and enjoy working with them.

I'm really interested in modern history, but to fulfill a History degree at Brown you have to do modern and pre-modern.

I already had the sense that I was someone who was more spiritual than specifically religious. ... I'm really interested in those things that are more far-reaching than culture, nationality, race, religion.

I hope my head doesn't get very big. I'm just going to keep my feet on the ground, stick to friends and family and try to lead a normal life.

Acting is telling the truth under imaginary circumstances. I cannot think of a worse way to describe acting. Also, I'm the worst liar ever.

Don’t think I’m going off to find myself though. I already know who I am.

People say things to me like, 'It's really cool that you don't go out and get drunk all the time and go to clubs.' I appreciate that, but I'm kind of an introverted kind of person just by nature.

I want to avoid becoming too styled, too ‘done’ and too generic. You see people as they go through their career, and they just become more and more like everyone else. They start out with something individual about them, but it gets lost.

As an actress I take roles I find interesting.

I love having the door opened for me. Isn't that just polite? But the key is, would you then mind if I opened the door for you? The key is, chivalry should be consensual. Both parties should be feeling good about that.

I find the whole concept of being ‘sexy’ embarrassing and confusing.

I would say there have been different stages of my feminist awakening. The more layers you peel back and the more things you're made aware of, you're like, "Oh my God."

Being passionate is not what makes you a girl, it's what makes you a human.

I like to think of myself as an actress, I think of going through all of the films as my kind of film academy, the way that I've learnt.

I don't know who this quote is by but the friends that you can call at 3am are the ones that really count and I am lucky that I have a few of those. So, I just drew on that and the people who believe in me as they lift you up. It's really important to have people around you that do that.

I had been doing something for more than half of my life that I wanted to continue doing - I really loved making the film and I really love acting and it is what I want to do.

I didn't see many female politicians on TV. I didn't see women in history textbooks, so I did geography, and art and English literature. But I know I must have been affected by not seeing women represented.

I still have friends from primary school. And my two best girlfriends are from secondary school. I don't have to explain anything to them. I don't have to apologize for anything. They know. There's no judgment in any way.

For the first two movies, I had a huge crush on Tom Felton. He was my first crush. He totally knows. We talked about it - we still laugh about it. We are really good friends now, and that's cool.

I love painting and have a need to do it.

Why has the word become such an uncomfortable one?

I can be 100 years old but I will always be proud to say I was in Harry Potter.

I would love to not date someone in the same industry as me. Otherwise it becomes what it means to everyone else.

When I started dating I had this kind of Romeo and Juliet, fateful, romantic idea about love. It was almost that you were a victim - that there was a lot of pain involved and that was how it should be. Shakespeare said the course of true love never did run smooth and I had a sense it had to be painful. It was such a revelation to realise it shouldn't be that way and you get to choose who you love and who you give your heart to.

Reducing your life down to three pairs of jeans, two skirts, a couple of shirts, and a few pairs of shoes was so nice for me. I really loved living in this tiny room where I didnt have space for anything. It sounds really lame, but it made me feel a lot more free, because I just didnt have as many choices.

I'm not going to school just for the academics - I wanted to share ideas, to be around people who are passionate about learning.

Concentrate on comfort - even if that means wearing the same thing over and over, because when I feel comfortable, I feel so much more relaxed and have a much better time.

I went from being totally unknown and never acting professionally to being in a major movie and being very famous. It all happened so quickly, I didn't have any time to work things out. It's been pretty scary at times.

― Emma Watson Quotes

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Tal Gur is an author, founder, and impact-driven entrepreneur at heart. After trading his daily grind for a life of his own daring design, he spent a decade pursuing 100 major life goals around the globe. His journey and most recent book, The Art of Fully Living, has led him to found Elevate Society.

 
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