Eleanor D Roosevelt Quotes & Sayings

In the long run there is no more liberating, no more exhilarating experience than to determine one's position, state it bravely, and then act boldly. Action brings with it its own courage, its own energy, a growth of self-confidence that can be acquired in no other way — Eleanor Roosevelt

The mind must be trained, rather than the memory. — Eleanor Roosevelt

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. — Eleanor Roosevelt

And you can really see in all of these issues that are priorities for Eleanor Roosevelt, where the compromises are painful, the compromises are hard, and the difficulties between them really begin to loom very large by 1936, by 1938. — Blanche Wiesen Cook

If we fail to meet our problems here, no one else in the world will do so. If we fail, the heart goes out of progressives throughout the world. — Eleanor Roosevelt

Eleanor (Roosevelt) wasn't the light, witty type he'd been expected to marry. Just the opposite: she was slow to laugh, bored by small talk, serious-minded, shy. Her mother, a fine-boned, vivacious aristocrat, had nicknamed her "Granny" because of her demeanor. Franklin was everything that she was not: bold and buoyant, with a wide, irrepressible grin, as easy with people as she was cautious. Eleanor craved intimacy and weighty conversations; he loved parties, flirting, and gossip. — Susan Cain

No man is defeated without until he has first been defeated within. — Eleanor Roosevelt

It is today that we create the world of the future. — Eleanor Roosevelt

No one, Eleanor Roosevelt said, can make you feel inferior without your consent. Never give it. — Marian Wright Edelman

Organize first for knowledge, first with the object of making us know ourselves as a nation, for we have to do that before we canbe of value to other nations of the world and then organize to accomplish the things that you decide to want. Anddon't make decisions with the interest of youth alone before you. Make your decisions because they are good for the nation as a whole. — Eleanor Roosevelt

So, after all, we are but puppets, creatures of our fate, not commanding it but being molded by it. — Eleanor Roosevelt

When you know to laugh and when to look upon things as too absurd to take seriously, the other person is ashamed to carry through even if he was serious about it. — Eleanor Roosevelt

There is no more precious experience in life than friendship. And I am not forgetting love and marriage as I write this; the lovers, or the man and wife, who are not friends are but weakly joined together. One enlarges his circle of friends through contact with many people. One who limits those contacts narrows the circle and frequently his own point of view as well. — Eleanor Roosevelt

Lest I keep my complacent way I must remember somewhere out there a person died for me today. As long as there must be war, I ask and I must answer was I worth dying for? — Eleanor Roosevelt

Most of the work that's done in the world gets done by people who weren't feeling all that well at the time that they did it. — Eleanor Roosevelt

being acquisitive on a large scale, cannot have value if it is bought at the expense of others. — Eleanor Roosevelt

Since everybody is an individual, nobody can be you. You are unique. No one can tell you how to use your time. It is yours. Your life is your own. You mold it. You make it. — Eleanor Roosevelt

What I have learned from my own experience is that the most important ingredients in a child's education are curiosity, interest, imagination, and a sense of the adventure of life. — Eleanor Roosevelt

The constant pressure to bring about conformity is a dangerous thing. — Eleanor Roosevelt

Eleanor Roosevelt started off almost every early article she wrote, starting with, "My mother was the most beautiful woman I'd ever seen." And I think her life was a constant and continual and lifelong contrast with her mother. — Blanche Wiesen Cook

I regretted what a serious teenager I'd been: There were no posters of pop stars or favorite movies, no girlish collection of photos or corsages. Instead there were paintings of sailboats, proper pastel pastorals, a portrait of Eleanor Roosevelt. The latter was particularly strange, since I'd known little about Mrs. Roosevelt, except that she was good, which at the time I suppose was enough. Given my druthers now, I'd prefer a snapshot of Warren Harding's wife, "the Duchess," who recorded the smallest offenses in a little red notebook and avenged herself accordingly. Today I like my first ladies with a little bite. — Gillian Flynn

Franklin [D. Roosevelt] had a good way of simplifying things. He made people feel that he had a real understanding of things and they felt they had about the same understanding. — Eleanor Roosevelt

Until Eleanor Roosevelt, there was only one or two First Ladies in all of American history who made an impact, who people could even have recognized or identified. And it's really only been since Jackie Kennedy that there's been this idea that the family life of the president is such a central thing. — Gail Collins

The campaign to put a woman on the $20 bill has narrowed the choices down to four finalists. The four finalists are Rosa Parks, Harriet Tubman, Eleanor Roosevelt, and Flo from the Progressive Insurance ads. — Conan O'Brien

Our Father, who has set a restlessness in our hearts and made us all seekers after that which we can never fully find, forbid us to be satisfied with what we make of life. Draw us from base content and set our eyes on far-off goals. Keep us at tasks too hard for us that we may be driven to Thee for strength. Deliver us from fretfulness and self-pitying; make us sure of the good we cannot see and of the hidden good in the world. Open our eyes to simple beauty all around us and our hearts to the loveliness men hide from us because we do not try to understand them. Save us from ourselves and show us a vision of a world made new. — Eleanor Roosevelt

There is not human being from whom we cannot learn something if we are interested enough to dig deep. — Eleanor Roosevelt

One of the best ways of enslaving a people is to keep them from education. — Eleanor Roosevelt

I came upon a telegram from Eleanor Roosevelt herself to Gypsy Rose Lee that read, 'May your bare ass always be shining'. That was the clincher; I had to write about this woman. — Karen Abbott

Feelings, too, are facts. Emotion is a fact. Human experience is a fact. It is often possible to gain more real insight into human beings and their motivation by reading great fiction than by personal acquaintance. — Eleanor Roosevelt

the toe of an enormous and heroic — Eleanor Roosevelt

The word communist, of course, has become a rallying cry for certain people here just as the word Jew was in Hitler's Germany, a way of arousing emotion without engendering thought. — Eleanor Roosevelt

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 would be curiosity. — Eleanor Roosevelt

I wonder if one of the penalties of growing older is that you become more and more conscious that nothing is very permanent. — Eleanor Roosevelt

What counts, in the long run, is not what you read; it is what you sift through your own mind; it is the ideas and impressions that are aroused in you by your reading. It is the ideas stirred in your own mind, the ideas which are a reflection of your own thinking, which make you an interesting person — Eleanor Roosevelt

I had often joked in my speeches that I had imaginary conversations with Mrs. Roosevelt to solicit her advice on a range of subjects. It's actually a useful mental exercise to help analyze problems, provided you choose the right person to visualize. Eleanor Roosevelt was ideal. — Hillary Clinton

It seems to me that I cannot afford, as a self-respecting individual, to refuse to do a thing merely because it will make me disliked or bring down a storm of criticism on my head. — Eleanor Roosevelt

The world conspires to help those who are in love with the beauty of their dreams. — Eleanor Roosevelt

This is your life, not someone else's. It is your own feeling of what is important, not what people will say. Sooner or later, you are bound to discover that you cannot please all of the people around you all of the time. Some of t hem will attribute to you motives you never dreamed of. Some of them will misinterpret your words and actions, making them completely alien to you. So you had better learn fairly early that you must not expect to have everyone understand what you say and what you do. — Eleanor Roosevelt