The 10 Most Empowering Things Emma Watson Said in 2015

1."Women feel like we need permission... We need to lead and change that." - in an interview with Facebook about the #HeForShe campaign, March 2015

2. ​"If you stand for equality, then you're a feminist. Sorry to tell you, you're a feminist." - in an interview with Facebook about the #HeForShe campaign, March 2015​

3. "Femininity needs to be embraced wherever it is, whether it be in a man or a woman or a nonconforming gender person." - in an interview with Facebook about the #HeForShe campaign, March 2015​

4."Don't let anyone tell you what you can or cannot do, or cannot achieve. Do not allow it." - in an interview with Facebook about the #HeForShe campaign, March 2015​

5. ​"​At 25, for the first time in my life, I feel like I have a sense of self that I'm comfortable with. I actually do have things that I want to say and I want to be my most authentic self." - in an interview with the Evening Standard, November 2015

6. "It sounds like a ridiculous thing to say, but I'm very interested in truth, in finding ways to be messy and unsure and flawed and incredible and great and my fullest self, all wrapped into one." - in an interview with the Evening Standard, November 2015​

7. ​"​I want to be a woman of the Renaissance. I want to paint and write. And above all, I want to continue to act. I simply want to do everything." - in an interview with Vogue Italia, November 2015​

8."I have experienced sexism in that I have been directed by male directors 17 times and only twice by women. Of the producers I've worked with, 13 have been male and only one has been a woman. But I am lucky: I have always insisted on being treated equally and have generally won that equality." - in an interview with The Guardian, September 2015​

9. "Women share this planet fifty-fifty and they are underrepresented, their potential astonishingly untapped." - in her #HeForShe speech at the World Economic Forum, January 2015

10. "Become an engineer." - on Twitter, in response to a young woman who asked, "My dad says I can't be an engineer 'cause it's a 'men's profession' what do I do to change that?", January 2015

​Follow Lauren on Twitter. From Cosmopolitan US.