Quotes by Eleanor Roosevelt

“A little simplification would be the first step toward rational living, I think.”

“A woman is like a tea bag - you can't tell how strong she is until you put her in hot water.”

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

“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.”

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

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

“Autobiographies are only useful as the lives you read about and analyze may suggest to you something that you may find useful in your own journey through life.”

“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.”

“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.”

“Do what you feel in your heart to be right – for you’ll be criticized anyway.”

“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.”

“Friendship with oneself is all important, because without it one cannot be friends with anyone else in the world.”

“Happiness is not a goal; it is a by-product.”

“Hate and force cannot be in just a part of the world without having an effect on the rest of it.”

“Have convictions. Be friendly. Stick to your beliefs as they stick to theirs. Work as hard as they do.”

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

“I do not think that I am a natural born mother... If I ever wanted to mother anyone, it was my father.”

“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.”

“I once 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.”

“I think that somehow, we learn who we really are and then live with that decision.”

“I'm so glad I never feel important, it does complicate life!”

“If life were predictable it would cease to be life, and be without flavor.”

“In all our contacts it is probably the sense of being really needed and wanted which gives us the greatest satisfaction and creates the most lasting bond.”

“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.”

“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.”

“It is not fair to ask of others what you are not willing to do yourself.”

“It is not more vacation we need - it is more vocation.”

“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.”

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

“Justice cannot be for one side alone, but must be for both.”

“Learn from the mistakes of others. You can't live long enough to make them all yourself.”

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

“Many people will walk in and out of your life, but only true friends will leave footprints in your heart.”

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

“Never allow a person to tell you no who doesn't have the power to say yes.”

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

“No matter how plain a woman may be, if truth and honesty are written across her face, she will be beautiful.”

“No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.”

“Old age has deformities enough of its own. It should never add to them the deformity of vice.”

“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.”

“One's philosophy is not best expressed in words; it is expressed in the choices one makes... and the choices we make are ultimately our responsibility.”

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

“People grow through experience if they meet life honestly and courageously. This is how character is built.”

“Perhaps nature is our best assurance of immortality.”

“Pit race against race, religion against religion, prejudice against prejudice. Divide and conquer! We must not let that happen here.”

“Probably the happiest period in life most frequently is in middle age, when the eager passions of youth are cooled, and the infirmities of age not yet begun; as we see that the shadows, which are at morning and evening so large, almost entirely disappear at midday.”

“Remember always that you not only have the right to be an individual, you have an obligation to be one.”

“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.”

“The Bible illustrated by Dore occupied many of my hours - and I think probably gave me many nightmares.”

“The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.”

“The mother of a family should look upon her housekeeping and the planning of meals as a scientific occupation.”

“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.”

“The only things one can admire at length are those one admires without knowing why.”

“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.”

“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.”

“There are practical little things in housekeeping which no man really understands.”

“There is not human being from whom we cannot learn something if we are interested enough to dig deep.”

“We are afraid to care too much, for fear that the other person does not care at all.”

“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.”

“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.”

“What one has to do usually can be done.”

“What you don't do can be a destructive force.”

“When life is too easy for us, we must beware or we may not be ready to meet the blows which sooner or later come to everyone, rich or poor.”

“When will our consciences grow so tender that we will act to prevent human misery rather than avenge it.”

“When you cease to make a contribution, you begin to die.”

“Will people ever be wise enough to refuse to follow bad leaders or to take away the freedom of other people.”

“With the new day comes new strength and new thoughts.”

“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.”

“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.'”

“You have to accept whatever comes and the only important thing is that you meet it with courage and with the best that you have to give.”

“You must do the things you think you cannot do.”