Eleanor Roosevelt Quotes

214 Sourced Quotes

It is always easier to do nothing than to try a new line of action.

Eleanor Roosevelt
If anyone were to ask me what I want out of life I would say- the opportunity for doing something useful, for in no other way, I am convinced, can true happiness be attained.

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
No human being can ever 'own' another, whether in friendship, love, marriage, or parenthood.

Eleanor Roosevelt
All wars eventually act as boomerangs and the victor suffers as much as the vanquished.

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

Eleanor Roosevelt
There is a desire for progress in the hearts of all men, and it is the sense of frustration and inability to move forward that brings violent revolution.

Eleanor Roosevelt
The most unhappy people in the world are those who face the days without knowing what to do with their time. But if you have more projects than you have time for, you are not going to be an unhappy person. This is as much a question of having imagination and curiosity as it is of actually making plans.

Eleanor Roosevelt
Ability is not something to be saved, like money, in the hope that you can draw interest on it. The interest comes from the spending. Unused ability, like unused muscles, will atrophy.

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

Eleanor Roosevelt
First of my own personal requirements is inner calm. This, I think, is an essential. One of the secrets of using your time well is to gain a certain ability to maintain peace within yourself so that much can go on around you and you can stay calm inside.

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
Franklin's illness...gave him strength and courage he had not had before. He had to think out the fundamentals of living and learn the greatest of all lessons - infinite patience and never ending persistence.

Eleanor Roosevelt
One's philosophy is not best expressed in words; it is expressed in the choices one makes. In stopping to think through the meaning of what I have learned, there is much that I believe intensely, much I am unsure of. 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.

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

Eleanor Roosevelt
No matter how plain a woman may be, if truth and honesty are written across her face, she will be beautiful.

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
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
It is so much easier to be enthusiastic than to reason!

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

Eleanor Roosevelt
If man is to be liberated to enjoy more leisure, he must also be prepared to enjoy this leisure fully and creatively. For people to have more time to read, to take part in their civic obligations, to know more about how their government functions and who their officials are might mean in a democracy a great improvement in the democratic processes. Let's begin, then, to think how we can prepare old and young for these new opportunities. Let's not wait until they come upon us suddenly and we have a crisis that we will be ill prepared to meet.

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