The Best Eleanor Roosevelt Quotes of all time

Eleanor Roosevelt quotes about being a woman

A woman is like a tea bag- you never know how strong she is until she gets in hot water.

 

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

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.

 

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

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.
~ Eleanor Roosevelt quotes on being a woman

Eleanor Roosevelt quotes on courage, strength and character

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

Confidence comes not from always being right but from not fearing to be wrong

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.

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

 

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

What one has to do usually can be done.

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

It takes courage to love, but pain through love is the purifying fire which those who love generously know. We all know people who are so much afraid of pain that they shut themselves up like clams in a shell and, giving out nothing, receive nothing and therefore shrink until life is a mere living death

What could we accomplish if we knew we could not fail

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.

Every time you meet a situation you 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 were before

 

Courage is exhilarating

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

Character building begins in our infancy and continues until death

No one can hurt you, without your consent.
~ Eleanor Roosevelt quotes on courage, streangth and character

Eleanor Roosevelt quotes and life lessons/ her best life quotes

If someone betrays you once, it’s their fault; if they betray you twice, it’s your fault.
~ Eleanor Roosevelt quotes

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

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

Life is what you make it. Always has been, always will be.

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.

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

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.

All human beings have failings, all human beings have needs and temptations and stresses. Men and women who live together through long years get to know one another’s failings; but they also come to know what is worthy of respect and admiration in those they live with and in themselves. If at the end one can say, This man used to the limit the powers that God granted him; he was worthy of love and respect and of the sacrifices of many people, made in order that he might achieve what he deemed to be his task, then that life has been lived well and there are no regrets

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.

No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.

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.

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.

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

If life were predictable it would cease to be life, and be without flavor.
~ Eleanor Roosevelt quotes

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.

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

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

My life can be so arranged that I can live on whatever I have. If I cannot live as I have lived in the past, I shall live differently, and living differently does not mean living with less attention to the things that make life gracious and pleasant or with less enjoyment of things of the mind.

Life has got to be lived – that’s all there is to it. At seventy, I would say the advantage is that you take life more calmly. You know that ‘this, too, shall pass

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.

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.

With the new day comes new strength and new thoughts.

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

Each of us has… all the time there is. Those years, weeks, hours, are the sands in the glass running swiftly away. To let them drift through our fingers is tragic waste. To use them to the hilt, making them count for something, is the beginning of wisdom
~ Eleanor Roosevelt quotes on life

Eleanor Roosevelt quotes on politics, religion and war

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 quotes

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

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.

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

A consciousness of the fact that war means practically total destruction is the reason, I think, for the rising tide to prevent what seems such a senseless procedure.

We must know what we think and speak out, even at the risk of unpopularity. In the final analysis, a democratic government represents the sum total of the courage and the integrity of its individuals. It cannot be better than they are. … In the long run there is no more exhilarating experience than to determine one’s position, state it bravely and then act boldly.

The word liberal comes from the word free. We must cherish and honor the word free or it will cease to apply to us.

When all is said and done, and statesmen discuss the future of the world, the fact remains that people fight these wars.
~ Eleanor Roosevelt quotes

I was one of those who was very happy when the original prohibition amendment passed. I thought innocently that a law in this country would automatically be complied with, and my own observation led me to feel rather ardently that the less strong liquor anyone consumed the better it was. During prohibition I observed the law meticulously, but I came gradually to see that laws are only observed with the consent of the individuals concerned and a moral change still depends on the individual and not on the passage of any law

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

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.
~ Eleanor Roosevelt quotes

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.

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

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

To be a citizen in a democracy, a human being must be given a healthy start

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

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.

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.

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

The Marines I have seen around the world have the cleanest bodies, the filthiest minds, the highest morale, and the lowest morals of any group of animals I have ever seen. Thank God for the United States Marine Corps!

Lest I keep my complacent way I must remember somewhere out there a person died for me today. As long as there must be war, I ask and I must answer was I worth dying for

In a democratic society we must live cooperatively, and serve the community in which we live, to the best of our ability. For our own success to be real, it must contribute to the success of others

This is a time for action — not for war, but for mobilization of every bit of peace machinery
~ Eleanor Roosevelt quotes on politics, war, peace and freedom

Other Great Eleanor Roosevelt quotes

Beautiful young people are accidents of nature, but beautiful old people are works of art.
~ Eleanor Roosevelt quotes

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

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

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

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

Great minds discuss ideas; Average minds discuss events; Small minds discuss people.

Actors are one family over the entire world.

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

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, 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.

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.

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.

It is better to light a candle than curse the darkness.

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

It takes as much energy to wish as it does to plan.
~ Eleanor Roosevelt quotes

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

Perhaps nature is our best assurance of immortality.

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 giving of love is an education in itself.

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.

Understanding is a two-way street.

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

You wouldn’t worry so much about what others think of you if you realized how seldom they do

You can often change your circumstances by changing your attitude

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

To handle yourself, use your head; to handle others, use your heart.” 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

There is not human being from whom we cannot learn something if we are interested enough to dig deep
~ Eleanor Roosevelt quotes

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

There are no have-to’s, just choices

You always admire what you really don’t understand

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

The greatest gift you could give a child, is an imagination.

He who learns but does not think is lost. He who thinks but does not learn is in great danger

When you know to laugh and when to look upon things as too absurd to take seriously, the other person is ashamed to carry through even if he was serious about it.

What is to give light must endure the burning

It is neither unusual nor new for me to have Negro friends, nor is it unusual for me to have found my friends among all races and religions of people.

He who loses money, loses much; He who loses a friend, loses much more. He who loses faith, loses all

The kind of man who thinks that helping with the dishes is beneath him will also think that helping with the baby is beneath him, and then he certainly is not going to be a very successful father

We will never have peace without friendship around the world

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

Absence makes the heart grow fonder

I have learned long ago to possess my soul in patience and accept the inevitable.

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…

To me who dreamed so much as a child, who made a dream world in which I was the heroine of an unending story, the lives of people around me continued to have a certain storybook quality. I learned something which has stood me in good stead many times — The most important thing in any relationship is not what you get but what you give. No writing has any real value which is not the expression of genuine thought and feeling

I have a great belief in spiritual force, but I think we have to realize that spiritual force alone has to have material force with it so long as we live in a material world. The two together make a strong combination.

Long ago, I made up my mind that when things were said involving only me, I would pay no attention to them, except when valid criticism was carried by which I could profit

One of the blessings of age is to learn not to part on a note of sharpness, to treasure the moments spent with those we love, and to make them whenever possible good to remember, for time is short

If the use of leisure time is confined to looking at TV for a few extra hours every day, we will deteriorate as a people.

Example is the best lesson there is
~ Eleanor Roosevelt quotes

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