Eleanor Roosevelt Quotes
Former First Lady of the United States
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people.
With the new day comes new strength and new thoughts.
The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.
A woman is like a tea bag - you can't tell how strong she is until you put her in hot water.
You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You are able to say to yourself, 'I lived through this horror. I can take the next thing that comes along.'
Do what you feel in your heart to be right- for you'll be criticized anyway. You'll be damned if you do, and damned if you don't.
It is not fair to ask of others what you are not willing to do yourself.
If life were predictable it would cease to be life, and be without flavor.
Freedom makes a huge requirement of every human being. With freedom comes responsibility. For the person who is unwilling to grow up, the person who does not want to carry his own weight, this is a frightening prospect.
No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.
It isn't enough to talk about peace. One must believe in it. And it isn't enough to believe in it. One must work at it.
Too often the great decisions are originated and given form in bodies made up wholly of men, or so completely dominated by them that whatever of special value women have to offer is shunted aside without expression.
Happiness is not a goal; it is a by-product.
Justice cannot be for one side alone, but must be for both.
Remember always that you not only have the right to be an individual, you have an obligation to be one.
In the long run, we shape our lives, and we shape ourselves. The process never ends until we die. And the choices we make are ultimately our own responsibility.
Anyone who thinks must think of the next war as they would of suicide.
You must do the things you think you cannot do.
One's philosophy is not best expressed in words; it is expressed in the choices one makes... and the choices we make are ultimately our responsibility.
I think, at a child's birth, if a mother could ask a fairy godmother to endow it with the most useful gift, that gift should be curiosity.
You have to accept whatever comes and the only important thing is that you meet it with courage and with the best that you have to give.
People grow through experience if they meet life honestly and courageously. This is how character is built.
I once had a rose named after me and I was very flattered. But I was not pleased to read the description in the catalogue: no good in a bed, but fine up against a wall.
We are afraid to care too much, for fear that the other person does not care at all.
The only advantage of not being too good a housekeeper is that your guests are so pleased to feel how very much better they are.
It takes as much energy to wish as it does to plan.
The giving of love is an education in itself.
When will our consciences grow so tender that we will act to prevent human misery rather than avenge it?
Never allow a person to tell you no who doesn't have the power to say yes.
Sometimes I wonder if we shall ever grow up in our politics and say definite things which mean something, or whether we shall always go on using generalities to which everyone can subscribe, and which mean very little.
When you cease to make a contribution, you begin to die.
Understanding is a two-way street.
Life must be lived and curiosity kept alive. One must never, for whatever reason, turn his back on life.
Old age has deformities enough of its own. It should never add to them the deformity of vice.
When life is too easy for us, we must beware or we may not be ready to meet the blows which sooner or later come to everyone, rich or poor.
Probably the happiest period in life most frequently is in middle age, when the eager passions of youth are cooled, and the infirmities of age not yet begun; as we see that the shadows, which are at morning and evening so large, almost entirely disappear at midday.
Only a man's character is the real criterion of worth.
The only things one can admire at length are those one admires without knowing why.
A little simplification would be the first step toward rational living, I think.
I think that somehow, we learn who we really are and then live with that decision.
Anyone who knows history, particularly the history of Europe, will, I think, recognize that the domination of education or of government by any one particular religious faith is never a happy arrangement for the people.
Autobiographies are only useful as the lives you read about and analyze may suggest to you something that you may find useful in your own journey through life.
There are practical little things in housekeeping which no man really understands.
My experience has been that work is almost the best way to pull oneself out of the depths.
The battle for the individual rights of women is one of long standing and none of us should countenance anything which undermines it.
Ambition is pitiless. Any merit that it cannot use it finds despicable.
Friendship with ones self is all important, because without it one cannot be friends with anyone else in the world.
It is not more vacation we need - it is more vocation.
I believe that anyone can conquer fear by doing the things he fears to do, provided he keeps doing them until he gets a record of successful experience behind him.
As for accomplishments, I just did what I had to do as things came along.
You can never really live anyone else's life, not even your child's. The influence you exert is through your own life, and what you've become yourself.
I'm so glad I never feel important, it does complicate life!
Since you get more joy out of giving joy to others, you should put a good deal of thought into the happiness that you are able to give.
Actors are one family over the entire world.
In all our contacts it is probably the sense of being really needed and wanted which gives us the greatest satisfaction and creates the most lasting bond.
What you don't do can be a destructive force.
I used to tell my husband that, if he could make me 'understand' something, it would be clear to all the other people in the country.
I can not believe that war is the best solution. No one won the last war, and no one will win the next war.
I have spent many years of my life in opposition, and I rather like the role.
Hate and force cannot be in just a part of the world without having an effect on the rest of it.
What one has to do usually can be done.
The Bible illustrated by Dore occupied many of my hours - and I think probably gave me many nightmares.
Perhaps nature is our best assurance of immortality.
Have convictions. Be friendly. Stick to your beliefs as they stick to theirs. Work as hard as they do.
I do not think that I am a natural born mother... If I ever wanted to mother anyone, it was my father.
I think I lived those years very impersonally. It was almost as though I had erected someone outside myself who was the president's wife. I was lost somewhere deep down inside myself. That is the way I felt and worked until I left the White House.
You can't move so fast that you try to change the mores faster than people can accept it. That doesn't mean you do nothing, but it means that you do the things that need to be done according to priority.
Campaign behavior for wives: Always be on time. Do as little talking as humanly possible. Lean back in the parade car so everybody can see the president.
The mother of a family should look upon her housekeeping and the planning of meals as a scientific occupation.