Roosevelt Eleanor 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

Do one thing every day that frightens you," Princess Mia advised her audience. "And never think that you can't make a difference. Even if you're only sixteen, and everyone is telling you that you're just a silly teenage girl - don't let them push you away. Remember one other thing Eleanor Roosevelt said: 'No one can make you feel inferior without your
consent.' You are capable of great things - never let anyone try to tell you that just because you've only been a princess for twelve days, you don't know what you're doing. — Meg Cabot

Courage is exhilarating. — Eleanor Roosevelt

The next war will be a war in which people not armies will suffer, and our boasted, hard-earned civilization will do us no good. Cannot the women rise to this great opportunity and work now, and not have the double horror, if another war comes, of losing their loved ones, and knowing that they lifted no finger when they might have worked hard? — 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

We can no longer oversimplify. We can no longer build lazy and false stereotypes: Americans are like this, Russians are like that, a Jew behaves in such a way, a Negro thinks in a different way. The lazy generalities - 'You know how women are ... Isn't that just like a man?' The world cannot be understood from a single point of view. — Eleanor Roosevelt

A trait no other nation seems to possess in quite the same degree as we do namely, a feeling of almost childish injury and resentment unless the world as a whole recognizes how innocent we are of anything but the most generous and harmless intentions — Eleanor Roosevelt

The library of my elementary school had this great biography section, and I read all of these paperback biographies until they were dog-eared. The story of Eleanor Roosevelt and Madame Curie and Martin Luther King and George Washington Carver and on and on and on. — Christine Quinn

So in 1924, Eleanor Roosevelt really gets a sense of what the limits of the battle and the contours of the battle are going to be. The men are contemptuous of the women, and the women really need to organize. She writes an article which becomes an article she writes in different ways over and over and over again: Women need to organize. They need to create their own bosses. They need to have support networks and gangs so that they are a force. — Blanche Wiesen Cook

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

No leader can be too far ahead of his followers. — Eleanor Roosevelt

I think it is impossible for one human being really to know another without first knowing and being at peace with himself. — Eleanor Roosevelt

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

Eleanor Roosevelt's very helpful to a lot of children who cannot speak French, who do not write well. And Marie Souvestre is fierce. She tears up students' papers that are not, you know, perfect. And Eleanor Roosevelt goes around, again, being incredibly helpful to children in need, children in trouble. And her best friends are the naughtiest girls who are in trouble. And she is a leader. And she is encouraged to be a leader. And everybody falls in love with her. She's a star. — Blanche Wiesen Cook

Her [Eleanor Roosevelt] father was the love of her life. Her father always made her feel wanted, made her feel loved, where her mother made her feel, you know, unloved, judged harshly, never up to par. And she was her father's favorite, and her mother's unfavorite. So her father was the man that she went to for comfort in her imaginings. — Blanche Wiesen Cook

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

In those days the typical Hollywood mother ran around looking like Eleanor Roosevelt, wearing a hat with a feather in it to attract attention. I never wore a hat and I never looked like Eleanor Roosevelt. — Florence Aadland

When women were excluded from New Deal programs, Eleanor Roosevelt fought to include them. Roosevelt was among a handful of leaders who realized the U.S. economy would not escape the depths of recession without the full contributions of women. — Lael Brainard

So I took an interest in politics, but I don't know whether I enjoyed it! It was a wife's duty to be interested in whatever interested her husband, whether it was politics, books, or a particular dish for dinner. — Eleanor Roosevelt

Your life is your own. You mold it. You make it. All anyone can do is to point out ways and means which have been helpful to others. Perhaps they will serve as suggestions to stimulate your own thinking until you know what it is that will fulfill you, will help you to find out what you want to do with your life. — Eleanor Roosevelt

If many of our young people have lost the excitement of the early settlers, who had a country to explore and develop, it is because no one remembers to tell them that the world has never been so challenging, so exciting ... Perhaps the older generation is often to blame with its cautious warning: "Take a job that will give you security, not adventure." But I say to the young: "Do not stop thinking of life as an adventure. You have no security unless you can live bravely, excitingly, and imaginatively; unless you can choose a challenge instead of a competence. — Eleanor Roosevelt

One's philosophy is not best expressed in words; it is expressed in the choices one makes. In stopping to think through the meaning of what I have learned, there is much I believe intensely, much I am unsure of. But this, at least, I believe with all my heart: 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. Hyde — Eleanor Roosevelt

Nobody else is going to do the things which are yours to be done in the world. — Eleanor Roosevelt

Power corrupts. Knowledge is power. Study hard. Be evil. — Eleanor Roosevelt

The most unhappy people in the world are those who face the days without knowing what to do with their time. But if you have more projects than you have time for, you are not going to be an unhappy person. This is as much a question of having imagination and curiosity as it is of actually making plans. — Eleanor Roosevelt

If you approach each new person you meet in a spirit of adventure, you will find yourself endlessly fascinated by the new channels of thought and experience and personality that you encounter. — Eleanor Roosevelt

It is a brave thing to have courage to be an individual; it is also, perhaps, a lonely thing. But it is better than not being an individual, which is to be nobody at all. — Eleanor Roosevelt

But there isn't going to be any First Lady. There is just to be plain, ordinary Mrs. Roosevelt ... I never wanted to be the president's wife, and don't want it now. You don't quite believe me, do you? Very likely no one would-except possibly some woman who had had the job. — Eleanor Roosevelt

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. — Eleanor Roosevelt

Don't call a woman a bitch. Call her an ass-hole. It still gets your point across and it's not sexist. — Eleanor Roosevelt

Practically nothing we do ever stands by itself. If it is good, it will serve some good purpose in the future. If it is evil, it may haunt us and handicap our efforts in unimagined ways. — Eleanor Roosevelt

Remember always that you have not only the right to be an individual; you have an obligation to be one. You cannot make any useful contribution in life unless you do this. — Eleanor Roosevelt

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. — Eleanor Roosevelt

A mature person is one who does not think only in absolutes, who is able to be objective even when deeply stirred emotionally, who has learned that there is both good and bad in all people and in all things, and who walks humbly and deals charitably with the circumstances of life, knowing that in this world no one is all knowing and therefore all of us need both love and charity. — Eleanor Roosevelt

You rarely achieve finality. If you did, life would be over, but as you strive new visions open before you, new possibilities for the satisfaction of living. — Eleanor Roosevelt

For instance, it is certain that women do not want a woman for President. Nor would they have the slightest confidence in her ability to fulfill the functions of that office. — Eleanor Roosevelt

Life has got to be lived - that's all there is to it. — Eleanor Roosevelt

I'm so glad I never feel important, it does complicate life! — Eleanor Roosevelt

I do not want church groups controlling the schools of our country. They must remain free. — Eleanor Roosevelt

What one has to do usually can be done. — Eleanor Roosevelt

You must do the things you think you cannot do. — Eleanor Roosevelt

Perhaps the basic thing which contributes to charm is the ability to forget oneself and be engrossed in other people. — Eleanor Roosevelt

One has to live in Washington to know what a city of rumors it is. — Eleanor Roosevelt

It is always disagreeable to take stands. It is always easier to compromise, always easier to let things go. To many women, and I am one of them, it is extraordinarily difficult to care about anything enough to cause disagreement or unpleasant feelings, but I have come to the conclusion that this must be done for a time until we can prove our strength and demand respect for our wishes. We cannot even be of real service in the coming campaign and speak as a united body of women unless we have the respect of men and show that when we express a wish, we are willing to stand by it. — Eleanor Roosevelt

I learned then that practically no one in the world is entirely bad or entirely good, and that motives are often more important than actions. — Eleanor Roosevelt

How hard it is to project oneself into the future. We are always prone to think of the conditions which are with us today as being permanent conditions. — Eleanor Roosevelt

Think as little as possible about yourself and as much as possible about other people. — Eleanor Roosevelt

I have learned long ago to possess my soul in patience and accept the inevitable. — Eleanor Roosevelt

You not only have a right to be an individual. You have a responsibility. — Eleanor Roosevelt

Do whatever comes your way to do as well as you can. Think as little as possible about yourself. Think as much as possible about other people. Dwell on things that are interesting. 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. — Eleanor Roosevelt

If you want a world ruled by law and not by force you must build up, from the very grassroots, a respect for law. — Eleanor Roosevelt

the thing we call French culture may be due to the fact that French children can play, surrounded by the things of the past, palaces of bygone kings, statues, remembrances of history. — Eleanor Roosevelt

Never mistake knowledge for wisdom. One helps you make a living; the other helps you make a life. — 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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The hard part of loving is that one has to learn so often to let go of those we love, so they can do things, so they can grow, so they can return to us with an even richer, deeper love. — Eleanor Roosevelt

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

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

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

Well, I didn't read My Day by Eleanor Roosevelt very carefully. I was away during a lot of that, in the war and so on. She was not all that good a writer. She was a little bit on the banal side, and you know, what happened, and then this happened, and then that happened ... But I will say this. She got very well paid for it. — William A. Rusher

Life was meant to be lived, and curiosity must be kept alive. One must never, for whatever reason, turn his back on life. — Eleanor Roosevelt

Perhaps in His wisdom the Almighty is trying to show us that a leader may chart the way, may point out the road to lasting peace, but that many leaders and many peoples must do the building. — Eleanor Roosevelt

They seemed like a team. And I think it is fair to say that Roosevelt was the consummate politician and that Eleanor was the socially conscious activist. It gave them a nice combination of yang and yin, which they took advantage of. And I think it worked very well for them politically. — William A. Rusher

Anger is one letter short of danger. — Eleanor Roosevelt

If we want a free and peaceful world, if we want to make the deserts bloom and man grow to greater dignity as a human being - we can do it. — Eleanor Roosevelt

(Awesome is the word one uses for Eleanor Roosevelt, Mt. Kilimanjaro, and pitching a no-hit no-run ballgame. Not available for the crappy cheese quesadilla you had this afternoon, nor for anybody who Dances with the Stars. With or without a wooden leg.) — Harlan Ellison

All big things in human history have been arrived at slowly and through many compromises. — Eleanor Roosevelt

We have reached a point today where labor-saving devices are good only when they do not throw the worker out of his job. — Eleanor Roosevelt

I have never felt that anything really mattered but knowing that you stood for the things in which you believed and had done the very best you could. — Eleanor Roosevelt

If life were predictable it would cease to be life,and be without flavor — Eleanor Roosevelt

Or perhaps one can learn only by one's own mistakes. The essential thing is to learn. Learning and living. — Eleanor Roosevelt

Anxiety," Kierkegaard said, "is the dizziness of freedom. — Eleanor Roosevelt

On international relations, Eleanor Roosevelt really takes a great shocking leadership position on the World Court. In fact, it amuses me. The very first entry in her FBI file begins in 1924, when Eleanor Roosevelt supports American's entrance into the World Court. And the World Court comes up again and again - '33, '35. In 1935, Eleanor Roosevelt goes on the air; she writes columns; she broadcast three, four times to say the US must join the World Court. — Blanche Wiesen Cook

To be a citizen in a democracy, a human being must be given a healthy start. — Eleanor Roosevelt

Every time you meet a situation you think at the time it is an impossibility and you go through the tortures of the damned, once you have met it and lived through it, you find that forever after you are freer than you were before. — Eleanor Roosevelt

Spiritual leadership should remain spiritual leadership and the temporal power should not become too important in any church. — Eleanor Roosevelt

To me who dreamed so much as a child, who made a dreamworld in which I was the heroine of an unending story, the lives of people around me continued to have a certain storybook quality. I learned something which has stood me in good stead many times - The most important thing in any relationship is not what you get but what you give. — Eleanor Roosevelt

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

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

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