Isabelle Cook

“Roosevelt “believed that with enough energy and spirit anything could be achieved by man,” the philosopher Isaiah Berlin wrote in an essay comparing Roosevelt and Churchill. “So passionate a faith in the future,” Berlin went on, “implies an exceptionally sensitive awareness, conscious or self-conscious, of the tendencies of one’s milieu, of the desires, hopes, fears, loves, hatreds, of the human beings who compose it, of what are described as ‘trends.’” This uncanny awareness, Berlin argued, was the source of Roosevelt’s genius. It was almost as if the “inner currents [and] tremors” of human society were registering themselves within his nervous system, “with a kind of seismographical accuracy.”
― Doris Kearns Goodwin, No ordinary time : Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt : the home front in World War II

“The people on that broadcast had been part of one of the most historic victories ever known. But they didn’t go around telling themselves how great they were. They didn’t print up bumper stickers commemorating their own awesomeness. Their first instinct was to remind themselves they were not morally superior to anyone else. Their collective impulse was to warn themselves against pride and self-glorification. They intuitively resisted the natural human tendency toward excessive self-love.”
― David Brooks, The Road to Character

“In 2018 a group of psychologists led by J. D. W. Clifton published the results of a five-year study, for which they analyzed enormous amounts of internet data looking for major trends in human attitudes. They found that our culture is divided between people who see the universe as dangerous, frightening, and meaningless, and those who see it as “safe, enticing, and alive.” The researchers called these two perspectives “primal world beliefs.” They described how, because perception is selectively screened and interpreted according to belief systems, people in either camp can find abundant evidence to support their worldviews.”
― Martha Beck, The Way of Integrity: Finding the Path to Your True Self

“I think there is more opportunity now than ever before for women in politics if they will keep their ideals high and go in with the purpose of being of service rather than with the purpose of obtaining an office.”
― Joseph P. Lash, Eleanor and Franklin: The Story of Their Relationship, Based on Eleanor Roosevelt's Private Papers