Eleanor Roosevelt Quotes

Ability is not something to be saved, like money, in the hope that you can draw interest on it. The interest comes from the spending. Unused ability, like unused muscles, will atrophy. It is tragic to realize that the majority of human beings, even the so-called educated, call upon only the smallest fraction of their potential capacity. They leave many talents dormant. They fail to develop their mental qualities. They are almost unaware of the degree of energy upon which they might call to build a full and rewarding life.

The encouraging thing is that every time you meet a situation, though you may 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 ever were before. . . . 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.

It is not that you set the individual apart from society but that you recognize in any society that the individual must have rights that are guarded.

In business courtesy and efficiency have a symbiotic relationship.

A candle can bring light to a dungeon but it can also be used to light a deadly marijuana cigarette.

Losing money is a big loss, losing friends is greater than the loss, also lost all faith is lost

it is harder to be philosophical when you are young.

It takes courage to love, but pain through love is the purifying fire which those who love generously know.

Men have to be reminded that women exist.

People can only make you inferior with your consent.

I believe you should tell the story of injustices, of inequalities, of bad conditions, so that the people as a whole in this country really face the problems that people who are pushed to the point of striking know all about, but others know practically nothing about.

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.

We all create the person we become by our choices as we go through life. In a real sense, by the time we are adults, we are the sum total of the choices we have made.

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.

We are given in our newspapers and on TV and radio exactly what we, the public, insist on having, and this very frequently is mediocre information and mediocre entertainment.

Think as little as possible about yourself and as much as possible about other people.

I think the thing we must look for actually is a growth in our people and in whoever comes in a quality of courage to tell our people just what world conditions are.

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.

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

When you are genuinely interested in one thing, it will always lead to something else.

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

If everything was in your favor, if you did not have to surmount any great mountains, then you have nothing to be proud of. But if you feel that you have special difficulties, then you must indeed be proud of your achievement.

I shall either find a way, or make one (attributed)

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.

No human being can ever 'own' another, whether in friendship, love, marriage, or parenthood.

More people are ruined by victory, I imagine, than be defeat.

It takes as much energy to wish as it does to plan.

If you can develop this ability to see what you look at, to understand its meaning, to readjust your knowledge to this new information, you can continue to learn and to grow as long as you live and you’ll have a wonderful time doing it.

... any citizen should be willing to give all that he has to give his country in work or sacrifice in times of crisis.

If you prepare yourself at every point as well as you can, with whatever means you may have, however meager they may seem, you will be able to grasp opportunity for broader experience when it appears. Without preparation you cannot do it.

Nothing has ever been achieved by the person who says, ‘It can’t be done.’

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.

To a certain extent I don't see any real need for socialism in the United States immediately, but things change and it may be that there will come a need for partial changes in our economy.

My experience has been that work is almost the best way to pull oneself out of the depths.

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.

I have spent many years of my life in opposition, and I rather like the role.

A successful life for a man or for a woman seems to me to lie in the knowledge that one has developed to the limit the capacities with which one was endowed; that one has contributed something constructive to family and friends and to a home community; that one has brought happiness wherever it was possible; that one has earned one's way in the world, has kept some friends, and need not be ashamed to face oneself honestly.

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.

I think that if the atomic bomb did nothing more, it scared the people to the point where they realized that either they must do something about preventing war or there is a chance that there might be a morning when we would not wake up.

Keep us at tasks too hard for us that we may be driven to Thee for strength.

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.

Smearing good people like Lauchlin Currie [former administrative assistant to President Roosevelt], Alger Hiss and others is, I think, unforgiveable... Anyone knowing Mr. Currie or Mr. Hiss, who are the two people whom I happen to know fairly well, would not need any denial on their part to know they are not Communists. Their records prove it.

Our real battlefield today is Asia and our real battle is the one between democracy and communism. . . . We have to prove to the world and particularly to downtrodden areas of the world which are the natural prey to the principles of communist economics that democracy really brings about happier and better conditions for the people as a whole.

Poverty is an expensive luxury. We cannot afford it.

The labor movement has a great role to play in our country today.