Eleanor Roosevelt Quotes

214 Sourced Quotes

What we need in the world is manners... I think that if, instead of preaching brotherly love, we preached good manners, we might get a little further. It sounds less righteous and more practical.

Eleanor Roosevelt
Each generation supposes that the world was simpler for the one before it.

Eleanor Roosevelt
I believe in active citizenship, for men and women equally, as a simple matter of right and justice. I believe we will have better government in all of our countries when men and women discuss public issues together and make their decisions on the basis of their different areas of experience and their common concern for the welfare of their families and their world.

Eleanor Roosevelt
As life developed, I faced each problem as it came along. As my activities and work broadened and reached out, I never tried to shirk. I tried never to evade an issue. When I found I had something to do--I just did it.

Eleanor Roosevelt
I would not be happy unless I had some regular work to do every day and I imagine that I will always feel that way no matter how old I am.

Eleanor Roosevelt
I was perfectly certain that I had nothing to offer of an individual nature and that my only chance of doing my duty as the wife of a public official was to do exactly as the majority of women were doing...

Eleanor Roosevelt
I think we ought to impress on both our girls and boys that successful marriages require just as much work, just as much intelligence and just as much unselfish devotion, as they give to any position they undertake to fill on a paid basis.

Eleanor Roosevelt
It is very difficult to have a free, fair and honest press anywhere in the world. In the first place, as a rule, papers are largely supported by advertising, and that immediately gives the advertisers a certain hold over the medium they use.

Eleanor Roosevelt
Curiously enough, it is often the people who refuse to assume any responsibility who are apt to be the sharpest critics of those who do.

Eleanor Roosevelt
Strength that goes wrong is even more dangerous than weakness that goes wrong.

Eleanor Roosevelt
For all of us, as we grow older, perhaps the most important thing is to keep alive our love of others and to believe that our love and interest are as vitally necessary to them as to us. This is what makes us keep on growing and refills the fountains of energy.

Eleanor Roosevelt
Somehow we must be able to show people that democracy is not about words, but action.

Eleanor Roosevelt
A number of people still think of the United States as being overwhelmingly English, Protestant, and white. This erroneous idea influences their whole outlook.

Eleanor Roosevelt
I found that almost everyone had something interesting to contribute to my education.

Eleanor Roosevelt
A successful life for a man or for a woman seems to me to lie in the knowledge that one has developed to the limit the capacities with which one was endowed; that one has contributed something constructive to family and friends and to a home community; that one has brought happiness wherever it was possible; that one has earned one's way in the world, has kept some friends, and need not be ashamed to face oneself honestly.

Eleanor Roosevelt
A respect for the rights of other peoples to determine their forms of government and their economy will not weaken our democracy. It will inevitably strengthen it.

Eleanor Roosevelt
Any citizen should be willing to give all that he has to give his country in work or sacrifice in times of crisis.

Eleanor Roosevelt
If you take stands in any way and people feel that you have any success in - a following, why those who disagree with you are going to feel very strongly about it.

Eleanor Roosevelt
The kind of propaganda that some of the religious groups, aided and abetted by the opposition, put forth in that campaign utterly disgusted me. If I needed anything to show me what prejudice can do to the intelligence of human beings that campaign was the best lesson I could have had.

Eleanor Roosevelt
About the only value the story of my life may have is to show that one can, even without any particular gifts, overcome obstacles that seem insurmountable if one is willing to face the fact that they must be overcome.

Eleanor Roosevelt
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.

Eleanor Roosevelt
I never met Mahatma Gandhi, but, I think everyone felt they knew him even if they hadn't met him.

Eleanor Roosevelt
Of course Mahatma Gandhi you might say did not have so much physical vigor but he certainly seemed to have extraordinary resistance, which perhaps is rather different from physical vigor.

Eleanor Roosevelt
It is curious how much more interest can be evoked by a mixture of gossip, romance and mystery than by facts.

Eleanor Roosevelt
Usefulness, whatever form it may take, is the price we should pay for the air we breathe and the food we eat and the privilege of being alive.

Eleanor Roosevelt
We will never have peace without friendship around the world.

Eleanor Roosevelt
Of course, I do not believe in having everyone who is a liberal called a communist, or everyone who is conservative called a fascist.

Eleanor Roosevelt
I think the thing we must look for actually is a growth in our people and in whoever comes in a quality of courage to tell our people just what world conditions are.

Eleanor Roosevelt
Most women, I think, though they may complain a little about this, would agree that meeting the needs of others is not a real burden; it is what makes life worth living. It is probably the deepest satisfaction a woman has.

Eleanor Roosevelt
Feelings, too, are facts. Emotion is a fact. Human experience is a fact. It is often possible to gain more real insight into human beings and their motivation by reading great fiction than by personal acquaintance.

Eleanor Roosevelt