Selected Quotes By Eleanor Roosevelt
"The giving of love is an education in itself."
Eleanor Roosevelt, Love, Intelligence/Wisdom
"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."
Eleanor Roosevelt, Sex
"We do not have to become heroes overnight. Just a step at a time, meeting each thing that comes up, seeing it as not as dreadful as it appears, discovering that we have the strength to stare it down."
Eleanor Roosevelt, Strength, Problems
"There is not human being from whom we cannot learn something if we are interested enough to dig deep."
Eleanor Roosevelt, Intelligence/Wisdom
"Where, after all, do universal human rights begin? In small places, close to home - so close and so small that they cannot be seen on any maps of the world. Yet they are the world of the individual person; the neighborhood he lives in; the school or college he attends; the factory, farm, or office where he works. Such are the places where every man, woman, and child seeks equal justice, equal opportunity, equal dignity without discrimination. Unless these rights have meaning there, they have little meaning anywhere. Without concerted citizen action to uphold them close to home, we shall look in vain for progress in the larger world."
Eleanor Roosevelt, Justice
"All of life is a constant education."
Eleanor Roosevelt, Intelligence/Wisdom, Life
"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, Anger and Fighting
"Today is the oldest you've ever been, and the youngest you'll ever be again."
Eleanor Roosevelt, Life, Time
"Courage is exhilarating."
Eleanor Roosevelt, Courage
"It takes as much energy to wish as it does to plan."
Eleanor Roosevelt, Planning
"Pit race against race, religion against religion, prejudice against prejudice. Divide and conquer! We must not let that happen here."
Eleanor Roosevelt, Anger and Fighting
"When you cease to make a contribution, you begin to die."
Eleanor Roosevelt, Death
"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, Freedom
"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."
Eleanor Roosevelt, Freedom
"The Marines I have seen around the world have the cleanest bodies, the filthiest minds, the highest morale, and the lowest morals of any group of animals I have ever seen. Thank God for the United States Marine Corps!"
Eleanor Roosevelt, Government
"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."
Eleanor Roosevelt, Anger and Fighting
"A stumbling block to the pessimist is a stepping-stone to the optimist."
Eleanor Roosevelt, Opportunities
"Do the things that interest you and do them with all your heart. Don't be concerned about whether people are watching you or criticizing you. The chances are that they aren't paying any attention to you. It's your attention to yourself that is so stultifying. But you have to disregard yourself as completely as possible. If you fail the first time then you'll just have to try harder the second time. After all, there's no real reason why you should fail. Just stop thinking about yourself."
Eleanor Roosevelt, Life, Criticism
"I think that somehow, we learn who we really are and then live with that decision."
Eleanor Roosevelt, Life
"It's your life-but only if you make it so."
Eleanor Roosevelt, Life
"Light a candle instead of cursing the darkness."
Eleanor Roosevelt, Life
"People grow through experience if they meet life honestly and courageously. This is how character is built."
Eleanor Roosevelt, Courage, Life
"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, Life
"I believe that anyone can conquer fear by doing the things he fears to do ..."
Eleanor Roosevelt, Courage
"One thing life has taught me: if you are interested, you never have to look for new interests. They come to you. When you are genuinely interested in one thing, it will always lead to something else."
Eleanor Roosevelt, Life
"Work is always an antidote to depression."
Eleanor Roosevelt, Work
"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, Intelligence/Wisdom
"When will our consciences grow so tender that we will act to prevent human misery rather than avenge it?"
Eleanor Roosevelt, Kindness, Anger and Fighting
"No one won the last war, and no one will win the next war."
Eleanor Roosevelt, Anger and Fighting
"Never mistake knowledge for wisdom. One helps you make a living; the other helps you make a life."
Eleanor Roosevelt, Intelligence/Wisdom, Life
"Never allow a person to tell you no who doesn't have the power to say yes."
Eleanor Roosevelt, Life
"Friendship with oneself is all important, because without it one cannot be friends with anyone else in the world."
Eleanor Roosevelt, Friendship
"Once I 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."
Eleanor Roosevelt, Sex
"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, Intelligence/Wisdom, Life, Love
"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."
Eleanor Roosevelt, Life
"What could we accomplish if we knew we could not fail?"
Eleanor Roosevelt, Success
"You have to accept whatever comes, and the only important thing is that you meet it with the best you have to give."
Eleanor Roosevelt, Life
"It is not fair to ask of others what you are not willing to do yourself."
Eleanor Roosevelt, Management
"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, Life
"Life is what you make it. Always has been, always will be."
Eleanor Roosevelt, Life
"Happiness is not a goal...it's a by-product of a life well lived."
Eleanor Roosevelt, Happiness, Life
"Do not stop thinking of life as an adventure. You have no security unless you can live bravely, excitingly, imaginatively; unless you can choose a challenge instead of competence."
Eleanor Roosevelt, Courage, Life
"With the new day comes new strength and new thoughts."
Eleanor Roosevelt, Strength, Intelligence/Wisdom, Life
"The reason that fiction is more interesting than any other form of literature, to those who really like to study people, is that in fiction the author can really tell the truth without humiliating himself."
Eleanor Roosevelt, Art
"If someone betrays you once, it’s their fault; if they betray you twice, it’s your fault."
Eleanor Roosevelt, Life
"Beautiful young people are accidents of nature, but beautiful old people are works of art."
Eleanor Roosevelt, Life
"You can often change your circumstances by changing your attitude."
Eleanor Roosevelt, Life
"To handle yourself, use your head; to handle others, use your heart."
Eleanor Roosevelt, Intelligence/Wisdom, Kindness
"We are afraid to care too much, for fear that the other person does not care at all."
Eleanor Roosevelt, Love
"No matter how plain a woman may be, if truth and honesty are written across her face, she will be beautiful."
Eleanor Roosevelt, Sex, Truth
"Many people will walk in and out of your life, but only true friends will leave footprints in your heart."
Eleanor Roosevelt, Life, Friendship
"It takes courage to love, but pain through love is the purifying fire which those who love generously know. We all know people who are so much afraid of pain that they shut themselves up like clams in a shell and, giving out nothing, receive nothing and therefore shrink until life is a mere living death."
Eleanor Roosevelt, Courage, Love, Life, Death
"The purpose of life is to live it, to taste experience to the utmost, to reach out eagerly and without fear for newer and richer experience."
Eleanor Roosevelt, Life
"The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams."
Eleanor Roosevelt, Goals
"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 have lived through this horror. I can take the next thing that comes along.' You must do the thing you think you cannot do."
Eleanor Roosevelt, Strength, Courage, Goals
"Do what you feel in your heart to be right – for you’ll be criticized anyway."
Eleanor Roosevelt, Criticism
"Do one thing every day that scares you."
Eleanor Roosevelt, Goals
"A woman is like a tea bag; you never know how strong it is until it's in hot water."