Eleanor Roosevelt Quotes

Somehow we learn who we really are and then live with that decision.

You can not live at all if you do not learn to adapt yourself to your life as it happens to be.

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

The encouraging thing is that every time you meet a situation, though you may 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 ever were before. If you can live through that, you can live through anything. You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face.

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

I feel that the care of libraries and the use of books, and the knowledge of books, is a tremendously vital thing, and that we who deal with books and who love books have a great opportunity to bring about something in this country which is more vital here than anywhere else, because we have the chance to make a democracy that will be a real democracy.

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

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.

There is a growing wave in this country of fear, and of intolerance which springs from fear. Sometimes it is a religious intolerance, sometimes it is a racial intolerance, but all intolerance grows from the same roots.

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 otherachievements amount to nothing.

Happiness is not a goal it is a byproduct.

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

When you have decided what you believe what you feel must be done have the courage to stand alone and be counted.

...so much attention is paid to the aggressive sins, such as violence and cruelty, and greed with all their tragic effects, that too little attention is paid to the passive sins, such as apathy and laziness, which in the long run can have a more devastating and destructive effect upon society than the others.

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.

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

No one from the beginning of time has had security.

Character building begins in our infancy and continues until death.

You can't move so fast that you try to change [a situation] 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.

Do what you feel in your heart to be right – for you’ll be criticized anyway.

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

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

The trouble is that not enough people have come together with the firm determination to live the things which they say they believe.

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

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

Don't call a woman a bitch. Call her an ass-hole. It still gets your point across and it's not sexist.

You not only have a right to be an individual. You have a responsibility.

...Learn to concentrate, to give all your attention to the thing at hand, and then to be able to put it aside and go on to the next thing without confusion. My husband said that being President of the United States meant that you saw more kinds of people, took up more subjects, and learn more about a variety of things than anyone else. But it required complete concentration on the person you were with and on what he was saying. When that person left the room, you pulled down a shade in your mind, and you were ready, with your attention free, for what the next person had to say. You might have to shift from banking to forestry, but each subject had the attention and concentration it required and each, in turn, was put in the back of the mind, ready to be called upon when needed.

With the new day comes new strength and new thoughts.

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."

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

It's your life-but only if you make it so.

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

No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.

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

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

Do one thing every day that scares you.

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.

Every time you meet a situation though you think at the time it is an impossibility and you go through the torture of the damned once you have met it and lived through it you find that forever after you are freer than you were before.

This I know. This I believe with all my heart. 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!

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

More people are ruined by victory I imagine than by defeat.

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 his own weight, this is a frightening prospect.

We have to make these young people (of the Depression) feel that they are necessary. (They should be given) "certain things for which youth craves – the chance for self-sacrifice for an ideal.

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.

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

Change means the unknown.

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

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

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

When you get to the end of your rope tie a knot in it and hang on.

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.

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.

I'm glad I never feel important it does complicate life.

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

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?

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

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

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

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!'