Eleanor Roosevelt Quotes

214 Sourced Quotes

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
Enjoy every minute you have with those you love, my dear, for no one can take joy that is past away from you. It will be there in your heart to live on when the dark days come.

Eleanor Roosevelt
Those who attack always do so with greater fervor than those who defend.

Eleanor Roosevelt
A society in which there is widespread economic insecurity can turn freedom into a barren and vapid right for millions of people.

Eleanor Roosevelt
Caring comes from being able to put yourself in the position of the other person.

Eleanor Roosevelt
Because they have so little, children must rely on imagination rather than experience.

Eleanor Roosevelt
Practically nothing we do ever stands by itself. If it is good, it will serve some good purpose in the future. If it is evil, it may haunt us and handicap our efforts in unimagined ways.

Eleanor Roosevelt
The separation of church and state is extremely important to any of us who holds to the original traditions of our nation.... To change these traditions... would be harmful to our whole attitude of tolerance in the religious area. If we look at situations which have arisen in the past in Europe and other world areas, I think we will see the reason why it is wise to hold to our early traditions.

Eleanor Roosevelt
We will have to want peace, want it enough to pay for it, before it becomes an accepted rule.

Eleanor Roosevelt
Always be on time. Never try to make any personal engagements. Do as little talking as humanly possible. Never be disturbed by anything. Always do what you're told to do as quickly as possible. Remember to lean back in a parade, so that people can see your husband. Don't get too fat to ride three on a seat. Get out of the way as quickly as you're not needed.

Eleanor Roosevelt
It has been a long fight to put the control of our economic system in the hands of the government.

Eleanor Roosevelt
There are three fundamentals for human happiness - love and faith, and work which will produce at least a minimum of material security. These things must be made possible for all human beings, men and women alike.

Eleanor Roosevelt
We can no longer oversimplify. We can no longer build lazy and false stereotypes: Americans are like this, Russians are like that, a Jew behaves in such a way, a Negro thinks in a different way. The lazy generalities - 'You know how women are... Isn't that just like a man?' The world cannot be understood from a single point of view.

Eleanor Roosevelt
I'm intensely anxious to preserve the freedom that gives you the right to think and to act and to talk as you please. That I think is essential to happiness and the life of the people.

Eleanor Roosevelt
The important thing is neither your nationality nor the religion you professed, but how your faith translated itself in your life.

Eleanor Roosevelt
I have learned long ago to possess my soul in patience and accept the inevitable.

Eleanor Roosevelt
At any age it does us no harm to look over our past shortcomings and plan to improve our characters and actions in the coming year.

Eleanor Roosevelt
All of us in this country give lip service to the ideals set forth in the Bill of Rights and emphasized by every additional amendment, and yet when war is stirring in the world, many of us are ready to curtail our civil liberties. We do not stop to think that curtailing these liberties may in the end bring us a greater danger than the danger we are trying to avert.

Eleanor Roosevelt
We have come to accept bigger and bigger things as meaning greater and greater efficiency, more and more prosperity and more and more freedom. The two do not go together of necessity...

Eleanor Roosevelt
We need emotional outlets in this country, and the more artistic people we develop the better it will be for us as a nation.

Eleanor Roosevelt
The greatest tragedy of old age is the tendency for the old to feel unneeded, unwanted, and of no use to anyone; the secret of happiness in the declining years is to remain interested in life, as active as possible, useful to others, busy, and forward looking.

Eleanor Roosevelt
I know that given great responsibility men sometimes change, but Mr. Nixon's Presidency would worry me.

Eleanor Roosevelt
I do not think I will ever become deadened, because I live in other people's lives, I must admit there are times when it weighs medown because I can't do some of the things I want.

Eleanor Roosevelt
I think that in great crises you need to have deep rooted convictions and I have a feeling from the kind of campaigns that I have watched Mr. Nixon in in the past that his convictions are not very strong.

Eleanor Roosevelt
We must be willing to learn the lesson that cooperation may imply compromise, but if it brings a world advance it is a gain for each individual nation.

Eleanor Roosevelt
The constant pressure to bring about conformity is a dangerous thing.

Eleanor Roosevelt
Do the things that interest you and do them with all your heart. Don't be concerned about whether people are watching you or criticizing you. The chances are that they aren't paying attention to you.

Eleanor Roosevelt
There is no more precious experience in life than friendship. And I am not forgetting love and marriage as I write this; the lovers, or the man and wife, who are not friends are but weakly joined together. One enlarges his circle of friends through contact with many people. One who limits those contacts narrows the circle and frequently his own point of view as well.

Eleanor Roosevelt
We stand today at the threshold of a great event both in the life of the United Nations and in the life of mankind, that is the approval by the General Assembly of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Eleanor Roosevelt
I often wonder how we can make the more fortunate in this country fully aware of the fact that the problem of the unemployed is not a mechanical one. It is a problem alive and throbbing with human pain.

Eleanor Roosevelt