Quotes by Eleanor Roosevelt

The purpose of life, after all, is to live it, to taste experience to the utmost, to reach out eagerly and without fear for newer and richer experience.

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

You must do the things you think you cannot do.

With the new day comes new strength and new thoughts.

The most important word in the English language is hope.

For our own success to be real, it must contribute to the success of others.

To leave the world richer--that is the ultimate success.

The basis of world peace is the teaching which runs through almost all the great religions of the world. Love thy neighbor as thyself.

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

Before we can make friends with anyone else, we must first make friends with ourselves.

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

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

Courage is more exhilarating than fear and in the long run it is easier. We do not have to become heroes overnight. 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.

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

Happiness is not a goal -- it's a by-product of a life well lived.

The giving of love is an education in itself.

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

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

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

Nobody can make you feel inferior without your consent.

Too many of us stay walled in because we are afraid of being hurt. We are afraid to care too much; for fear that the other person does not care as much or not at all.

Light a candle instead of cursing the darkness.

Those who attack always do so with greater fervor than those who defend.

Character building begins in infancy and continues until death.

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

No relationship in this world ever remains warm and close unless good effort is made on both sides to keep it so.

None of us can afford to stop learning or to check our curiosity about new things, or to lose our humility in the face of new situations.

Each generation supposes that the world was simpler for the one before it.

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

Do what you feel in your heart to be right -- for you'll be criticized anyway.

Poverty is an expensive luxury. We cannot afford it.

Good leaders inspire people to have confidence in their leader. Great leaders inspire people to have confidence in themselves.

Conservation of land and conservation of people frequently go hand in hand.

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

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

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.

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.

Nearly all great civilizations that perished did so because they had crystallized, because they were incapable of adapting themselves to new conditions, new methods, new points of view. It is as though people would rather die than change.

It is impossible to be a cynic if you live a good deal with young people. Fundamentally, every young person has a feeling that the future is going to hold something of value.

The kind of propaganda that some of the religious groups, aided and abetted by the opposition, put forth in that campaign utterly disgusted me. If I needed anything to show me what prejudice can do to the intelligence of human beings that campaign was the best lesson I could have had.

In business courtesy and efficiency have a symbiotic relationship.

Furnish an example, stop preaching, stop shielding, don't prevent self-reliance and initiative, allow your children to develop along their own lines.

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

When you build a memorial, you build it not because the person wanted it, but for the future -- for generations who didn't know the man and didn't know the era in which he lived.

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

I could never say in the morning, I have a headache and cannot do thus and so. Headache or no headache, thus and so had to be done.

The basis of all good human behavior is kindness.

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

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.

I miss you greatly dear. The nicest time of day is when I write to you. You have a stormier time than I do but I miss you as much, I think... Please keep most of your heart in Washington as long as I'm here for most of mine is with you!

If man is to be liberated to enjoy more leisure, he must also be prepared to enjoy this leisure fully and creatively.

I learned then that practically no one in the world is entirely bad or entirely good, and that motives are often more important than actions.

The important thing is neither your nationality nor the religion you professed, but how your faith translated itself in your life.

This is not a time when women should be patient. We are in a war and we need to fight it with all our ability and every weapon possible. Women pilots, in this particular case, are a weapon waiting to be used.

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.

I often wonder how we can make the more fortunate in this country fully aware of the fact that the problem of the unemployed is not a mechanical one. It is a problem alive and throbbing with human pain.

Everyone has the right to work, to free choice of employment, to just and favorable conditions of work and to protection against unemployment.

To some of us, hunger was more academic than real, but we must try to develop the ability to feel the urgency of such a situation.

As with all children, the feeling that I was useful was perhaps the greatest joy I experienced.

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.

You seem to think that everyone can save money if they have the character to do it. As a matter of fact, there are innumerable people who have a wide choice between saving and giving their children the best possible opportunities. The decision is usually in favor of the children.

The greatest tragedy of old age is the tendency for the old to feel unneeded, unwanted, and of no use to anyone; the secret of happiness in the declining years is to remain interested in life, as active as possible, useful to others, busy, and forward looking.

There is in every country an antipathy to the foreigner.

Unused ability, like unused muscles, will atrophy.

Perhaps the basic thing which contributes to charm is the ability to forget oneself and be engrossed in other people.

Since everybody is an individual, nobody can be you. You are unique. No one can tell you how to use your time. It is yours. Your life is your own. You mold it. You make it.

All wars eventually act as boomerangs and the victor suffers as much as the vanquished.

Actors are one family over the entire world.

You future first ladies will feel that you are no longer clothing yourself, you are dressing a public monument.

In the long run there is no more exhilarating experience than to determine one's position, state it bravely and then act boldly.

I know that given great responsibility men sometimes change, but Mr. Nixon's Presidency would worry me.

It is very difficult to have a free, fair and honest press anywhere in the world. In the first place, as a rule, papers are largely supported by advertising, and that immediately gives the advertisers a certain hold over the medium they use.

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 me down 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.

One thing is for sure -- none of the arts flourishes on censorship and repression. And by this time it should be evident that the American public is capable of doing its own censoring.

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.

The will of the people shall be the basis of the authority of government.

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

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.

A respect for the rights of other peoples to determine their forms of government and their economy will not weaken our democracy. It will inevitably strengthen it.

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.

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.

Practically nothing we do ever stands by itself. If it is good, it will serve some good purpose in the future. If it is evil, it may haunt us and handicap our efforts in unimagined ways.

We need not fear any isms if our democracy is achieving the ends for which it was established.

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.

No one can insult you without your permission.

After the discovery in 1918 of love letters revealing that Franklin was involved with Lucy Mercer: The bottom dropped out of my own particular world, I faced myself, my surroundings, my world, honestly for the first time.

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 what belonged to my children, got back from audiences the love my children longed to give me.

A great deal of fear is a result of just not knowing. We do not know what is involved in a new situation. We do not know whether we can deal with it. The sooner we learn what it entails, the sooner we can dissolve our fear.

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

I think that if the atomic bomb did nothing more, it scared the people to the point where they realized that either they must do something about preventing war or there is a chance that there might be a morning when we would not wake up.

The war for freedom will never really be won because the price of freedom is constant vigilance over ourselves and over our Government.

If everything was in your favor, if you did not have to surmount any great mountains, then you have nothing to be proud of. But if you feel that you have special difficulties, then you must indeed be proud of your achievement.

Remember, no one can make you feel inferior without being related to you and repeatedly questioning why you're in nonprofit.

The leisure class is one in which individuals have sufficient economic security and sufficient leisure to find opportunity for a variety of satisfactions in life.

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.

Mr. Richard M. Nixon never has anything but hindsight.

To tell the people in the West not to use their cars means that these people may never see another soul for weeks and weeks nor have a way of getting a sick person to a doctor.

Spiritual leadership should remain spiritual leadership and the temporal power should not become too important in any church.

I found that almost everyone had something interesting to contribute to my education.

I know that we will be the sufferers if we let great wrongs occur without exerting ourselves to correct them.

Talking too much is a far greater social fault than talking too little.

Life has got to be lived -- that's all there is to it.

No writing has any real value which is not the expression of genuine thought and feeling.

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

You do the things that need to be done according to priority.

Success must include two things: the development of an individual to his utmost potentiality and a contribution of some kind to one's world.

Any citizen should be willing to give all that he has to give his country in work or sacrifice in times of crisis.

Mozart, who was buried in a pauper's grave, was one of the greatest successes we know of, a man who in his early thirties had poured out his inexhaustible gift of music, leaving the world richer because he had passed that way. To leave the world richer--that is the ultimate success.

It seems to me of great importance to teach children respect for life.

It is a curious thing in human experience, but to live through a period of stress and sorrow with another person, creates a bond which nothing seems able to break.

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

To undo a mistake is always harder than not to create one originally but we seldom have the foresight. Therefore we have no choice but to try to correct our past mistakes.

I have a great objection to seeing anyone, particularly anyone whom I care about, lose his self-control.

Once your children are grown up and have children of their own, the problems are theirs and the less the older generation interferes the better.

Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance.

The mobilization of world opinion and methods of negotiation should be developed and used by every nation in order to strengthen the United Nations.

This is a time for action -- not for war, but for mobilization of every bit of peace machinery.

You never have a normal family relationship in the White House; it's an impossible thing to have. You live in a goldfish bubble, and you snatch what you can for a personal life, but you never have a normal, natural existence.

The word communist, of course, has become a rallying cry for certain people here just as the word Jew was in Hitler's Germany, a way of arousing emotion without engendering thought.

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

A democratic form of government, a democratic way of life, presupposes free public education over a long period; it presupposes also an education for personal responsibility that too often is neglected.

Those of us who believe in the right of any human being to belong to whatever church he sees fit, and to worship God in his own way, cannot be accused of prejudice when we do not want to see public education connected with religious control of the schools, which are paid for by taxpayers' money.

The only joy in this hard life is serving others.

Sailors have the cleanest bodies and the filthiest minds.

A society in which there is widespread economic insecurity can turn freedom into a barren and vapid right for millions of people.

If it's a man's game so decidedly that a woman would be soiled by entering it, then there is something radically wrong with the American game of politics.

What has happened to us in this country? If we study our own history, we find that we have always been ready to receive the unfortunate from other countries, and though this may seem a generous gesture on our part, we have profited a thousand fold by what they have brought us.

We must do that which we think we cannot.

Life was meant to be lived.

There is nothing to regret, either for those who go, or for those who stay behind -- only an inheritance of good accomplishment to be lived up to by those who carry a loving memory in their hearts.

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.

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.

Be flexible, but stick to your principles.

Great leaders inspire people to have confidence in themselves.

Some people are going to leave a mark on this world, while others will leave a stain.

You'll be damned if you do, and damned if you don't.

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

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.

If you want a world ruled by law and not by force you must build up, from the very grassroots, a respect for law.

When it's better for everyone, it's better for everyone.

Each time you learn something new you must readjust the whole framework of your knowledge.

Every woman wants to be first to someone sometime in her life and that desire is the explanation for many strange things women do.

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.

If you can develop this ability to see what you look at, to understand its meaning, to readjust your knowledge to this new information, you can continue to learn and to grow as long as you live and you'll have a wonderful time doing it.

If we do not pay for children in good schools, then we are going to pay for them in prisons and mental hospitals.

Do not be afraid of mistakes, provided you do not make the same one twice.

You never know anyone until you marry them.

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?

Poor minds talk about people. Average minds talk about events. Great minds talk about ideas.

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.

Today is the oldest you've ever been, and the youngest you'll ever be again.

Philosophy is not best expressed in words; it is expressed in the choices one makes.

It is curious how much more interest can be evoked by a mixture of gossip, romance and mystery than by facts.

Surely, in the light of history, it is more intelligent to hope rather than to fear, to try rather than not to try. For one thing we know beyond all doubt: nothing has ever been achieved by the person who says: it can't be done.

The greatest gift you can give a child is an imagination.

We all create the person we become by our choices as we go through life. In a real sense, by the time we are adults, we are the sum total of the choices we have made.

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

Beautiful old people are works of art.

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

Curiosity must be kept alive.

Where, after all, do universal human rights begin? In small places, close to home.

Do one thing everyday that scares you. Those small things that make us uncomfortable help us build courage to do the work we do.

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

The choices we make are ultimately our responsibility.

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

Courage is exhilarating.

What could we accomplish if we knew we could not fail?

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

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.'

If you approach each new person you meet in a spirit of adventure, you will find yourself endlessly fascinated by the new channels of thought and experience and personality that you encounter.

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

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.

If you lose money you lose much, If you lose friends you lose more, If you lose faith you lose all.

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.

We do not have to become heroes overnight. 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.

I wish with all my heart that every child could be so imbued with a sense of the adventure of life that each change, each readjustment, each surprise -- good or bad -- that came along would be welcomed as part of the whole enthralling experience.

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.

Anger is only one letter short of danger.

No man is defeated without until he has first been defeated within.

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

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

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