Eleanor Roosevelt quotes:

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

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

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.

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.'

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.

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

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.

With the new day comes new strength and new thoughts.

Women are like teabags. We don't know our true strength until we are in hot water!

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

Understanding is a two-way street.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

No one won the last war, and no one will win the next war.

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?

What one has to do usually can be done.

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

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

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.

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

Someone once asked me what I regarded as the three most important requirements for happiness. My answer was: A feeling that you have been honest with yourself and those around you; a feeling that you have done the best you could both in your personal life and in your work; and the ability to love others.

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.'

Absence makes the heart grow fonder

Beautiful young people are accidents of nature, but beautiful old people are works of art.

On the whole our armed services have been doing pretty well in the way of keeping us defended, but I hope our State Department will remember that it is really the department of achieving peace.

I believe in active citizenship, for men and women equally, as a simple matter of right and justice. I believe we will have better government in all of our countries when men and women discuss public issues together and make their decisions on the basis of their different areas of experience and their common concern for the welfare of their families and their world.

You always admire what you really don't understand. - Eleanor Roosevelt

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.

Staying aloof is not a solution, it is a cowardly evasion.

It seems to me of great importance to teach children respect for life. Towards this end, experiments on living animals in classrooms should be stopped. To encourage cruelty in the name of science can only destroy the finer emotions of affection and sympathy, and breed an unfeeling callousness in the young towards suffering in all living creatures.

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!

Perhaps nature is our best assurance of immortality.

No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.

Home-making today should have a background of scientific training because only in this way can real efficiency be achieved. The average girl wants to be able to keep her house with the least possible strain, and in order to do this she must have good training. This can best be achieved by taking a good course in home economics.

Poor minds talk about people average minds talk about events great minds talk about ideas

Terrific minds focus on tips; average minds go over activities; little minds talk about people today.

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

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

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.

I think it is impossible for one human being really to know another without first knowing and being at peace with himself.

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

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.

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

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.

All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights...

I am who I am today because of the choices I made yesterday.

Success is not something that can be measured or worn on a watch or hung on a wall. It is not the esteem of colleagues, or the admiration of the community, or the appreciation of patients. Success is the certain knowledge that you have become yourself, the person you will meant to be from all time. That should be reward enough.

Character building begins in our infancy and continues until death.

Friends, you and me... you brought another friend... and then there were three... we started our group... our circle of friends... and like that circle... there is no beginning or end.

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.

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.

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

This is a strange, little, complacent country [Switzerland], in many ways a USA in miniature but of course nearer the center of disturbance!

We gain strength, and courage, and confidence by each experience in which we really stop to look fear in the face... we must do that which we think we cannot.

I believe that anyone can conquer fear by doing the things he fears to do ...

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

You gain strength, courage, and confidence by doing the thing which you think you cannot do.

You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face.... The danger lies in refusing to face the fear, in not daring to come to grips with it. If you fail anywhere along the line it will take away your confidence. You must make yourself succeed every time. You must do the thing you think you cannot do.

It takes courage to love, but pain through love is the purifying fire which those who love generously know.

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.

We stand today at the threshold of a great event both in the life of the United Nations and in the life of mankind, that is the approval by the General Assembly of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

The hard part of loving is that one has to learn so often to let go of those we love, so they can do things, so they can grow, so they can return to us with an even richer, deeper love.

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

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

Our real battlefield today is Asia and our real battle is the one between democracy and communism. . . . We have to prove to the world and particularly to downtrodden areas of the world which are the natural prey to the principles of communist economics that democracy really brings about happier and better conditions for the people as a whole.

Courage is more exhilarating than fear, and in the long run, it is easier.

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.

Where, after all, do universal human rights begin? In small places, close to home - so close and so small that they cannot be seen on any maps of the world ... Such are the places where every man, woman and child seeks equal justice, equal opportunity, equal dignity without discrimination. Unless these rights have meaning there, they have little meaning anywhere.

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.

There are three fundamentals for human happiness - love and faith, and work which will produce at least a minimum of material security. These things must be made possible for all human beings, men and women alike.

You can't move so fast that you try to change the mores faster than people can accept it.

At all times, day by day, we have to continue fighting for freedom of religion, freedom of speech, and freedom from want... for these are things that must be gained in peace as well as in war.

You rarely achieve finality. If you did, life would be over, but as you strive new visions open before you, new possibilities for the satisfaction of living.

...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.

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

All of us ... should remember that no amount of flag-waving, pledging allegiance, or fervent singing of the national anthem is evidence that we are patriotic in the real sense of the word. ... Outward behavior, while important, is not the real measure of a man's patriotism.

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

No leader can be too far ahead of his followers.

Some friends leave footprints in your heart

There is no more precious experience in life than friendship. And I am not forgetting love and marriage as I write this; the lovers, or the man and wife, who are not friends are but weakly joined together. One enlarges his circle of friends through contact with many people. One who limits those contacts narrows the circle and frequently his own point of view as well.

Franklin's illness...gave him strength and courage he had not had before. He had to think out the fundamentals of living and learn the greatest of all lessons - infinite patience and never ending persistence.

True patriotism springs from a belief in the dignity of the individual, freedom and equality not only for Americans but for all people on earth, universal brotherhood and good will, and a constant and earnest striving toward the principles and ideals on which this country was founded.

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

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

If you have any interests you can gain a wider audience for those interests while the goldfish bowl is yours!

A good leader inspires people to have confidence in the leader, a great leader inspires people to have confidence in themselves.

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

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

I have often felt that I cheated my children a little. I was never so totally theirs as most mothers are. I gave to audiences whatbelonged to my children, got back from audiences the love my children longed to give me.

Do one thing every day that scares you.

Criticism ... makes very little dent upon me, unless I think there is some real justification and something should be done.

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.

Power corrupts. Knowledge is power. Study hard. Be evil.

I believe you should tell the story of injustices, of inequalities, of bad conditions, so that the people as a whole in this country really face the problems that people who are pushed to the point of striking know all about, but others know practically nothing about.