Eleanor Roosevelt Quotes

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.'

- Eleanor Roosevelt

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

- Eleanor Roosevelt

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

- Eleanor Roosevelt

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.

- Eleanor Roosevelt

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

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

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

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

Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people.

- Eleanor Roosevelt

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

- Eleanor Roosevelt

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.

- Eleanor Roosevelt

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

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.

- Eleanor Roosevelt

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.

- Eleanor Roosevelt

The giving of love is an education in itself.

- Eleanor Roosevelt

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

- Eleanor Roosevelt

Understanding is a two-way street.

- Eleanor Roosevelt

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

- Eleanor Roosevelt

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

- Eleanor Roosevelt

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

- Eleanor Roosevelt

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

- Eleanor Roosevelt

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

- Eleanor Roosevelt

Perhaps nature is our best assurance of immortality.

- Eleanor Roosevelt

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

- Eleanor Roosevelt

Sometimes I wonder if we shall ever grow up in our politics and say definite things which mean something, or whether we shall always go on using generalities to which everyone can subscribe, and which mean very little.

- Eleanor Roosevelt

The battle for the individual rights of women is one of long standing and none of us should countenance anything which undermines it.

- Eleanor Roosevelt

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 should be curiosity.

- Eleanor Roosevelt

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.

- Eleanor Roosevelt

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

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.

- Eleanor Roosevelt

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

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

- Eleanor Roosevelt

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

- Eleanor Roosevelt

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

- Eleanor Roosevelt

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

- Eleanor Roosevelt

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

- Eleanor Roosevelt

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

- Eleanor Roosevelt

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.

- Eleanor Roosevelt

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.

- Eleanor Roosevelt

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

- Eleanor Roosevelt

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

- Eleanor Roosevelt

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

- Eleanor Roosevelt

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.

- Eleanor Roosevelt

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

- Eleanor Roosevelt

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.

- Eleanor Roosevelt

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.

- Eleanor Roosevelt

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

- Eleanor Roosevelt

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

- Eleanor Roosevelt

No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.

- Eleanor Roosevelt

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

- Eleanor Roosevelt

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

- Eleanor Roosevelt

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

- Eleanor Roosevelt

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

- Eleanor Roosevelt

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

- Eleanor Roosevelt

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.

- Eleanor Roosevelt

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

- Eleanor Roosevelt

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

Friendship with ones self is all important, because without it one cannot be friends with anyone else in the world.

- Eleanor Roosevelt

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

- Eleanor Roosevelt

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.

- Eleanor Roosevelt

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

- Eleanor Roosevelt

Actors are one family over the entire world.

- Eleanor Roosevelt

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

- Eleanor Roosevelt

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

- Eleanor Roosevelt

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

- Eleanor Roosevelt

You must do the things you think you cannot do.

- Eleanor Roosevelt

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

- Eleanor Roosevelt

What one has to do usually can be done.

- Eleanor Roosevelt

With the new day comes new strength and new thoughts.

- Eleanor Roosevelt