Eleanor Roosevelt quotes

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

• 3
• discovery

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

• 3
• beliefs

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

• 3
• anything

What one has to do usually can be done.

• 3
• necessity

In all our contacts it is probably the sense of being really needed and wanted which gives us the greatest satisfaction and creates the most lasting bond.

• 3
• being

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

• 3
• accomplishments

It is equality of monotony which makes the strength of the British Isles.

• 2
• nation

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

• 2
• dissent

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

• 2
• seldom

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

• 2
• hot

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.

• 1
• fear

Justice cannot be for one side alone, but must be for both.

• 1
• alone

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.

• 1
• life

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.

• 1
• against

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.

• peace

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

• best

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.

• humor

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

• first

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.

• accept

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. Yet they are the world of the individual person; the neighborhood he lives in; the school or college he attends; the factory, farm, or office where he works. 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. Without concerted citizen action to uphold them close to home, we shall look in vain for progress in the larger world.

• humanity

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

• happiness

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.

• reading

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.

• clear

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.

• analyze

All human beings have failings, all human beings have needs and temptations and stresses. Men and women who live together through long years get to know one another's failings; but they also come to know what is worthy of respect and admiration in those they live with and in themselves. If at the end one can say, This man used to the limit the powers that God granted him; he was worthy of love and respect and of the sacrifices of many people, made in order that he might achieve what he deemed to be his task, then that life has been lived well and there are no regrets.

• failure

It is not more vacation we need - it is more vocation.

• need

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

• housekeeping

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.

• love

A mature person is one who does not think only in absolutes, who is able to be objective even when deeply stirred emotionally, who has learned that there is both good and bad in all people and in all things, and who walks humbly and deals charitably with the circumstances of life, knowing that in this world no one is all-knowing and therefore all of us need both love and charity.

• maturity

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

• character

A trait no other nation seems to possess in quite the same degree that we do -- namely, a feeling of almost childish injury and resentment unless the world as a whole recognizes how innocent we are of anything but the most generous and harmless intentions.

• america

You can never really live anyone else's life, not even your child's. The influence you exert is through your own life, and what you've become yourself.

• life

One's philosophy is not best expressed in words; it is expressed in the choices one makes. 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.

• choice

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.

• aside

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.

• advantage

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

• remember

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

• family

What you don't do can be a destructive force.

• force

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

• life

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

• life

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

• life

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

• afraid

Sometimes I wonder if we shall ever grow up in our politics and say definite things which mean something, or whether we shall always go on using generalities to which everyone can subscribe, and which mean very little.

• definite

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.

• belief

If someone betrays you once, it's their fault. If they betray you twice, it's your fault.

• fault

The giving of love is an education in itself.

• love

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.

• best

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.

• freedom

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

• effect

Perhaps in His wisdom the Almighty is trying to show us that a leader may chart the way, may point out the road to lasting peace, but that many leaders and many peoples must do the building.

• leadership

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.

• happiness

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

• bible

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

• mother

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.

• anyone

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

• grow

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.

• behavior

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.

• myself

Somewhere along the line of development we discover what we really are, and then we make our real decision for which we are responsible. Make that decision primarily for yourself because you can never really live anyone else's life, not even your own child's.

• decisions

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

• war