Eleanor Roosevelt Quotes

Great leaders inspire people to have confidence in themselves.

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.

We must do what we think we can't do.

Perhaps nature is our best assurance of immortality.

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 is own weight, this is a frightening prospect.

Love can often be misguided and do as much harm as good, but respect can do only good. It assumes that the other person's stature is as large as one's own, his rights as reasonable, his needs as important.

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.

Life must be lived and curiosity kept alive. One must never, for whatever reason, turn his back on life.

If you believe that a nation is really better off which achieves for a comparative few, those who are capable of attaining it, high culture, ease, opportunity, and that these few from their enlightenment should give what they consider best to those less favored, then you naturally belong to the Republican Party. But if you believe that people must struggle slowly to the light for themselves, then it seems to me that you are a Democrat.

I can not believe that war is the best solution. No one won the last war, and no one will win the next war.

If you must compromise, compromise up.

Each time you learn something new you must readjust the whole framework of your knowledge

As for accomplishments, I just did what I had to do as things came along.

A guest is really good or bad because of the host or hostess who makes being a guest an easy or a difficult task.

We cannot exist as a little island of well-being in a world where two-thirds of the people go to bed hungry every night.

Anyone who thinks must think of the next war as they would of suicide.

Beautiful old people are works of art.

Courage is more exhilarating than fear and in the long run it is easier. We do not have to become heroes over night. Just a step at a time, meeting each thing that comes up, seeing it is not as dreadful as it appeared, discovering we have the strength to stare it down.

...real prosperity can only come when everybody prospers.

I do not think I will ever become deadened, because I live in other people's lives, I must admit there are times when it weighs medown because I can't do some of the things I want.

Always be on time. Never try to make any personal engagements. Do as little talking as humanly possible. Never be disturbed by anything. Always do what you're told to do as quickly as possible. Remember to lean back in a parade, so that people can see your husband. Don't get too fat to ride three on a seat. Get out of the way as quickly as you're not needed.

Furnish an example, stop preaching, stop shielding, don't prevent self-reliance and initiative, allow your children to develop along thier own lines.

The very next thing you need to be doing is the thing that terrifies you the most.

People who 'view with alarm' never build anything.

it is always easier to do nothing than to try a new line of action.

... 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?

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.

Ambition is pitiless. Any merit that it cannot use it finds despicable.

Curiously enough, it is often the people who refuse to assume any responsibility who are apt to be the sharpest critics of those who do.

Make the most of What you have, When you have it, Where you are.

Only a man's character is the real criterion of worth.

There is a widespread understanding among the people of this nation, and probably among the people of the world, that there is no safety except through the prevention of war.

As life developed, I faced each problem as it came along. As my activities and work broadened and reached out, I never tried to shirk. I tried never to evade an issue. When I found I had something to do--I just did it.

Life was meant to be lived.

Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance.

We women are callow fledglings as compared with the wise old birds who manipulate the political machinery, and we still hesitate to believe that a woman can fill certain positions in public life as competently and adequately as a man. 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. Every woman who fails in a public position confirms this, but every woman who succeeds creates confidence.

One of the best ways of enslaving a people is to keep them from education... The second way of enslaving a people is to suppress the sources of information, not only by burning books but by controlling all the other ways in which ideas are transmitted.

I never met Mahatma Gandhi, but, I think everyone felt they knew him even if they hadn't met him.

I could not at any age be content to take my place in a corner by the fireside and simply look on.

It is a curious thing in human experience, but to live through a period of stress and sorrow with another person, creates a bond which nothing seems able to break.

Be flexible, but stick to your principles.

A stumbling block to the pessimist is a stepping-stone to the optimist.

When you 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 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 attention to you.

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

Everyone has the right to work, to free choice of employment, to just and favorable conditions of work and to protection against unemployment.

The giving of love and understanding is an education in itself.

We have to face the fact that either all of us are going to die together or we are going to learn to live together and if we are to live together we have to talk.