Top 100 Eleanor Roosevelt Quotes
#1. 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
#2. 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
#3. Each generation supposes that the world was simpler for the one before it.
Eleanor Roosevelt
#4. This freedom of which men speak, for which they fight, seems to some people a perilous thing. It has to be earned at a bitter cost and then - it has to be lived with. For freedom makes a huge requirement of every human being. With freedom comes responsibility.
Eleanor Roosevelt
#5. The constant pressure to bring about conformity is a dangerous thing.
Eleanor Roosevelt
#6. 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
#8. Enjoy every minute you have with those you love, my dear, for no one can take joy that is past away from you. It will be there in your heart to live on when the dark days come.
Eleanor Roosevelt
#9. I say to the young: Do not stop thinking of life as an adventure. You have no security unless you can live bravely, excitingly, imaginatively.
Eleanor Roosevelt
#11. I can't tell you how to succeed, but I can tell you how to fail: Try to please everybody.
Eleanor Roosevelt
#12. This is a time for action - not for war, but for mobilization of every bit of peace machinery.
Eleanor Roosevelt
#13. We must be willing to learn the lesson that cooperation may imply compromise, but if it brings a world advance it is a gain for each individual nation.
Eleanor Roosevelt
#14. I would not be happy unless I had some regular work to do every day and I imagine that I will always feel that way no matter how old I am.
Eleanor Roosevelt
#15. One of the best ways of enslaving a people is to keep them from education.
Eleanor Roosevelt
#16. We must know what we think and speak out, even at the risk of unpopularity.
Eleanor Roosevelt
#17. Nothing was ever accomplished by anyone who said 'It can't be done.'
Eleanor Roosevelt
#18. When will our consciences grow so tender that we will act to prevent human misery rather than avenge it?
Eleanor Roosevelt
#19. You can't move so fast that you try to change the mores faster than people can accept it. That doesn't mean you do nothing, but it means that you do the things that need to be done according to priority.
Eleanor Roosevelt
#20. Poor minds talk about people average minds talk about events great minds talk about ideas
Eleanor Roosevelt
#21. I do not think that I am a natural born mother ... If I ever wanted to mother anyone, it was my father.
Eleanor Roosevelt
#22. It is often the people who refuse to assume any responsibility who are apt to be the sharpest critics of those who do.
Eleanor Roosevelt
#24. 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.
Eleanor Roosevelt
#25. Too often the great decisions are originated and given form in bodies made up wholly of men, or so completely dominated by them that whatever of special value women have to offer is shunted aside without expression.
Eleanor Roosevelt
#26. 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
#27. 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
#28. Old age has deformities enough of its own. It should never add to them the deformity of vice.
Eleanor Roosevelt
#29. Your ambition should be to get as much life out of living as you possibly can, as much enjoyment, as much interest, as much experience, as much understanding. Not simply be what is generally called a 'success.'
Eleanor Roosevelt
#30. 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
#31. One of the first things we must get rid of is the idea that democracy is tantamount to capitalism.
Eleanor Roosevelt
#32. I could not at any age be content to take my place in a corner by the fireside and simply look on.
Eleanor Roosevelt
#33. The trouble is that not enough people have come together with the firm determination to live the things which they say they believe.
Eleanor Roosevelt
#34. The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.
Eleanor Roosevelt
#35. 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
#36. Usefulness, whatever form it may take, is the price we should pay for the air we breathe and the food we eat and the privilege of being alive.
Eleanor Roosevelt
#37. Every woman in public life needs to develop skin as tough as rhinoceros hide,
Eleanor Roosevelt
#38. 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.
Eleanor Roosevelt
#39. I carried it (a revolver) religiously and during the summer I asked a friend, a man who had been one of Franklin's bodyguards in New York State, to give me some practice in target shooting so that if the need arose I would know how to use the gun.
Eleanor Roosevelt
#40. I think we ought to impress on both our girls and boys that successful marriages require just as much work, just as much intelligence and just as much unselfish devotion, as they give to any position they undertake to fill on a paid basis.
Eleanor Roosevelt
#41. Have convictions. Be friendly. Stick to your beliefs as they stick to theirs. Work as hard as they do.
Eleanor Roosevelt
#42. A woman is like a tea bag - you can't tell how strong she is until you put her in hot water.
Eleanor Roosevelt
#43. 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.
Eleanor Roosevelt
#44. Nobody else is going to do the things which are yours to be done in the world.
Eleanor Roosevelt
#45. Will people ever be wise enough to refuse to follow bad leaders or to take away the freedom of other people?
Eleanor Roosevelt
#46. 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
#47. Looking back I see that I was always afraid of something: of the dark, of displeasing people, of failure. Anything I accomplished had to be done across a barrier of fear. ELEANOR ROOSEVELT
Eleanor Roosevelt
#49. The war for freedom will never really be won because the price of freedom is constant vigilance over ourselves and over our Government.
Eleanor Roosevelt
#53. Basically we could not have peace, or an atmosphere in which peace could grow, unless we recognized the rights of individual human beings ... their importance, their dignity ... and agreed that was the basic thing that had to be accepted throughout the world.
Eleanor Roosevelt
#54. Campaign behavior for wives: Always be on time. Do as little talking as humanly possible. Lean back in the parade car so everybody can see the president.
Eleanor Roosevelt
#55. No matter how avid they themselves may be for praise and appreciation, people are often niggardly in giving it to others, however merited it is.
Eleanor Roosevelt
#56. 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
#57. What we must learn to do is to create unbreakable bonds between the sciences and the humanities. We cannot procrastinate. The world of the future is in our making. Tomorrow is now.
Eleanor Roosevelt
#58. Losing money is a big loss, losing friends is greater than the loss, also lost all faith is lost
Eleanor Roosevelt
#59. Remember, no one can make you feel inferior without being related to you and repeatedly questioning why you're in nonprofit.
Eleanor Roosevelt
#60. When you have decided what you believe, what you feel must be done, have the courage to stand alone and be counted
Eleanor Roosevelt
#61. 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
#62. You wouldn't worry so much about what others think of you if you realized how seldom they do.
Eleanor Roosevelt
#63. 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
#65. You need not be proud of me ... I'm only being active till you can be again
it isn't such a great desire on my part to serve theworld and I'll fall back into habits of sloth quite easily!
Eleanor Roosevelt
#66. The term 'young adults' which is so often used today seems to me a misnomer, and one which, if taken seriously, may lead the adolescent into misunderstanding as to his nature and his role in life. 'Young he is; 'adult' he is not.
Eleanor Roosevelt
#67. To be mature you have to realize what you value most ... Not to arrive at a clear understanding of one's own values is a tragic waste. You have missed the whole point of what life is for.
Eleanor Roosevelt
#68. If life were predictable it would cease to be life,and be without flavor
Eleanor Roosevelt
#72. You [future first ladies] will feel that you are no longer clothing yourself, you are dressing a public monument.
Eleanor Roosevelt
#74. Perhaps the basic thing which contributes to charm is the ability to forget oneself and be engrossed in other people.
Eleanor Roosevelt
#75. 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
#76. A stumbling block to the pessimist is a stepping-stone to the optimist.
Eleanor Roosevelt
#77. Any citizen should be willing to give all that he has to give his country in work or sacrifice in times of crisis.
Eleanor Roosevelt
#79. 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
#80. What we need in the world is manners ... I think that if, instead of preaching brotherly love, we preached good manners, we might get a little further. It sounds less righteous and more practical.
Eleanor Roosevelt
#81. Anyone who has gone through great suffering is bound to have a greater sympathy and understanding of the problems of mankind.
Eleanor Roosevelt
#82. I never thought of achievement. I just did what came along for me to do - the thing that gave me the most pleasure.
Eleanor Roosevelt
#84. Success must include two things: the development of an individual to his utmost potentiality and a contribution of some kind to one's world.
Eleanor Roosevelt
#85. Remember always that you not only have the right to be an individual you have an obligation to be one.
Eleanor Roosevelt
#86. If people only realized what a war goes on in a child's mind and heart in a situation of this kind, I think they would try to explain more than they do,
Eleanor Roosevelt
#87. Today is the oldest you've ever been, and the youngest you'll ever be again.
Eleanor Roosevelt
#89. I am convinced that every effort must be made in childhood to teach the young to use their own minds. For one thing is sure: If they don't make up their minds, someone will do it for them.
Eleanor Roosevelt
#90. The Bible illustrated by Dore occupied many of my hours - and I think probably gave me many nightmares.
Eleanor Roosevelt
#93. I have a great objection to seeing anyone, particularly anyone whom I care about, lose his self-control.
Eleanor Roosevelt
#94. You can not live at all if you do not learn to adapt yourself to your life as it happens to be.
Eleanor Roosevelt
#96. 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
#97. 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.
Eleanor Roosevelt
#98. If quitting smoking seems hard right now, it is exactly what you should start doing
Eleanor Roosevelt
#100. 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
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