Eleanor Roosevelt Quotes

“Remember always that you have not only the right to be an individual; you have an obligation to be one. You cannot make any useful contribution in life unless you do this.”
― Eleanor Roosevelt

“What counts, in the long run, is not what you read; it is what you sift through your own mind; it is the ideas and impressions that are aroused in you by your reading. It is the ideas stirred in your own mind, the ideas which are a reflection of your own thinking, which make you an interesting person”
― Eleanor Roosevelt, You Learn by Living: Eleven Keys for a More Fulfilling Life

“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.”
― Eleanor Roosevelt, You Learn by Living: Eleven Keys for a More Fulfilling Life

“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.”
― Eleanor Roosevelt, You Learn by Living: Eleven Keys for a More Fulfilling Life

“Love can often be misguided and do as much harm as good, but respect can do only good. It assumes that the other person's stature is as large as one's own, his rights as reasonable, his needs as important.”
― Eleanor Roosevelt, You Learn by Living: Eleven Keys for a More Fulfilling Life

“Do whatever comes your way to do as well as you can. Think as little as possible about yourself. Think as much as possible about other people. Dwell on things that are interesting. 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

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

“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.”
― Eleanor Roosevelt, You Learn by Living: Eleven Keys for a More Fulfilling Life

“Each time you learn something new you must readjust the whole framework of your knowledge”
― Eleanor Roosevelt

“No man is defeated without until he has first been defeated within.”
― Eleanor Roosevelt, You Learn by Living: Eleven Keys for a More Fulfilling Life

“Obedience may have its uses, but it is no substitute for willing, uncoerced co-operation.”
― Eleanor Roosevelt, You Learn by Living: Eleven Keys for a More Fulfilling Life

“When it's better for everyone, it's better for everyone.”
― Eleanor Roosevelt

“If you want a world ruled by law and not by force you must build up, from the very grassroots, a respect for law.”
― Eleanor Roosevelt, You Learn by Living: Eleven Keys for a More Fulfilling Life

“Cease to be a drudge. Seek to be an artist.”
― Mary McLeod Bethune, Let Nobody Turn Us Around: Voices of Resistance, Reform, and Renewal

“...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.”
― Eleanor Roosevelt, You Learn by Living: Eleven Keys for a More Fulfilling Life

“America is not a pile of goods, more luxury, more comforts, a better telephone system, a greater number of cars. America is a dream of greater justice and opportunity for the average man and, if we can not obtain it, all our other
achievements amount to nothing.”
― Eleanor Roosevelt

“In the long run there is no more liberating, no more exhilarating experience than to determine one’s position, state it bravely, and then act boldly. Action brings with it its own courage, its own energy, a growth of self-confidence that can be acquired in no other way”
― Eleanor Roosevelt

“When Franklin says yes, yes, yes, he isn’t agreeing with you. He’s just listening to you.”
― Gore Vidal, The Last Empire: Essays 1992-2000

“I wasn't frightened. I was just afraid." Her aunt smiled. "Is there a difference?" "Oh yes," Eleanor said. "When you're frightened you run away. When you're afraid you keep on doing what you're supposed to do.”
― Ann Weil, Eleanor Roosevelt: Courageous Girl

“By the summer of 1933, Eleanor's melancholy had passed. 'The times of depression are often felt as gaps,' a psychologist has written, 'temporary losses of certainty or identity which leave us feeling empty.' Seen in this light, Eleanor's despondency was the intervening period of chaos between the breakup of her old identity as teacher and political activist in New York State and the establishment of a new identity in the White House.”
― Doris Kearns Goodwin, No Ordinary Time: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt: The Home Front in World War II

“I do not mind riding in day coaches...Please do not put yourself or the railroad to extra expense.--First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt”
― Marc Peyser, Hissing Cousins: The Untold Story of Eleanor Roosevelt and Alice Roosevelt Longworth

“I feel rather sad about politics,' she [Eleanor Roosevelt] wrote Isabella, 'there are so many who are out for themselves and not for the good of the country in both parties and conditions are so unsettled that we need a really fine leader.”
― Blanche Wiesen Cook

“Never allow a person to tell you no who doesn't have the power to say yes," Annika says. In theory, yes, but in this case I'm pretty sure Sherry's boss has the power to say both.
"What's that?" Sherry says. She sounds hesitant, as if she's not sure where this is going.
"It's a quote from Eleanor Roosevelt," Annika says. "Are you familiar with them?"
"I know a few," Sherry says.
"My best friend bought me a book of them. 'Do one thing every day that scares you' is what got me through my twenties. 'Do what you feel in your heart to be right- for you'll be criticized anyway.”
― Tracey Garvis Graves, The Girl He Used to Know

“No first lady before had ever become such a public figure. Her breadth of activities created new expectations against which her successors would be measured.”
― Doris Kearns Goodwin, No Ordinary Time: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt: The Home Front in World War II

“Eleanor Roosevelt's stand on civil rights, her insistence that America could not fight racism abroad while tolerating it at home, remains one of the affirming moments in the history of the home front during the war.”
― Doris Kearns Goodwin, No Ordinary Time: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt: The Home Front in World War II

“They made an extraordinary team. She was more earnest, less devious, less patient, less fun, more uncompromisingly moral; he possessed the more trustworthy political talent, the more finely tuned sense of timing, the better feel for the citizenry, the smarter understanding of how to get things done. She could travel the country when he could not; she could speak her mind without the constraints of public office. She was the agitator; he was the politician. But they were linked by indissoluble bonds and they drew strength from each other.”
― Doris Kearns Goodwin, No Ordinary Time: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt: The Home Front in World War II

“One day she received the mug and a shirt that had that famous Eleanor Roosevelt quote on it ('One day we will destroy the moon with indifference!')”
― Joseph Fink & Jeffrey Cranor, Welcome to Night Vale