Eleanor Roosevelt Quotes

214 Sourced Quotes

No leader can be too far ahead of his followers.

Eleanor Roosevelt
We do not move forward by curtailing people's liberty because we are afraid of what they may do or say.

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

Eleanor Roosevelt
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.

Eleanor Roosevelt
Up to a certain point it is good for us to know that there are people in the world who will give us love and unquestioned loyalty to the limit of their ability. I doubt, however, if it is good for us to feel assured of this without the accompanying obligation of having to justify this devotion by our behavior.

Eleanor Roosevelt
Everyone has the right to rest and leisure, including reasonable limitation of working hours and periodic holidays with pay.

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

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

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

Eleanor Roosevelt
If the use of leisure time is confined to looking at TV for a few extra hours every day, we will deteriorate as a people.

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
The mobilization of world opinion and methods of negotiation should be developed and used by every nation in order to strengthen the United Nations. Then if we are forced into war, it will be because there has been no way to prevent it through negotiation and the mobilization of world opinion. In which case we should have the voluntary support of many nations, which is far better than the decision of one nation alone, or even of a few nations.

Eleanor Roosevelt
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.

Eleanor Roosevelt
To leave the world richer — that is the ultimate success.

Eleanor Roosevelt
The fundamental right of freedom of thought and expression is essential. If you curtail what the other fellow says and does, you curtail what you yourself may say and do.

Eleanor Roosevelt
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.

Eleanor Roosevelt
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
I was one of those who was very happy when the original prohibition amendment passed. I thought innocently that a law in this country would automatically be complied with, and my own observation led me to feel rather ardently that the less strong liquor anyone consumed the better it was. During prohibition I observed the law meticulously, but I came gradually to see that laws are only observed with the consent of the individuals concerned and a moral change still depends on the individual and not on the passage of any law.

Eleanor Roosevelt
You get more joy out of the giving to others, and should put a good deal of thought into the happiness you are able to give.

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

Eleanor Roosevelt
To me who dreamed so much as a child, who made a dreamworld in which I was the heroine of an unending story, the lives of people around me continued to have a certain storybook quality. I learned something which has stood me in good stead many times — The most important thing in any relationship is not what you get but what you give.

Eleanor Roosevelt
One has to live in Washington to know what a city of rumors it is.

Eleanor Roosevelt
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.

Eleanor Roosevelt
We are given in our newspapers and on TV and radio exactly what we, the public, insist on having, and this very frequently is mediocre information and mediocre entertainment.

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

Eleanor Roosevelt
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.

Eleanor Roosevelt
In times past, the question usually asked by women was "How can we best help to defend our nation?" I cannot remember a time when the question on so many people's lips was "How can we prevent war?"
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. For many years war has been looked upon as almost inevitable in the solution of any question that has arisen between nations, and the nation that was strong enough to do so went about building up its defenses and its power to attack. It felt that it could count on these two things for safety.

Eleanor Roosevelt
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.

Eleanor Roosevelt
We face the future fortified with the lessons we have learned from the past. It is today that we must create the world of the future. Spinoza, I think, pointed out that we ourselves can make experience valuable when, by imagination and reason, we turn it into foresight.

Eleanor Roosevelt
You gain strength, and courage, and confidence by each experience in which we really stop to look fear in the face.... You must do the thing you think you cannot do.

Eleanor Roosevelt