Roosevelt Eleanor Quotes

Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery, today is a gift of God, which is why we call it the present.

A woman is like a tea bag; you never know how strong it is until it's in hot water.

Do one thing every day that scares you.

Well-behaved women seldom make history.

Do what you feel in your heart to be right – for you’ll be criticized anyway.

The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.

You probably wouldn’t worry about what people think of you if you could know how seldom they do.

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.

The purpose of life is to live it, to taste experience to the utmost, to reach out eagerly and without fear for newer and richer experience.

Great minds discuss ideas. Average minds discuss events. Small minds discuss people.

Many people will walk in and out of your life, but only true friends will leave footprints in your heart

But until a person can say deeply and honestly, "I am what I am today because of the choices I made yesterday," that person cannot say, "I choose otherwise.

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

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

To handle yourself, use your head; to handle others, use your heart.

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.

You can often change your circumstances by changing your attitude

Beautiful young people are accidents of nature, but beautiful old people are works of art.

If someone betrays you once, it’s their fault; if they betray you twice, it’s your fault.

With the new day comes new strength and new thoughts.

Do not stop thinking of life as an adventure. You have no security unless you can live bravely, excitingly, imaginatively; unless you can choose a challenge instead of competence.

Happiness is not a goal...it's a by-product of a life well lived.

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.

Life is what you make it. Always has been, always will be.

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

It is not fair to ask of others what you are not willing to do yourself.

You have to accept whatever comes, and the only important thing is that you meet it with the best you have to give.

What could we accomplish if we knew we could not fail?

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.

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.

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

Never allow a person to tell you no who doesn't have the power to say yes.

Never mistake knowledge for wisdom. One helps you make a living; the other helps you make a life.

No one won the last war, and no one will win the next war.

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

I think, at a child's birth, if a mother could ask a fairy godmother to endow it with the most useful gift, that gift would be curiosity.

Work is always an antidote to depression.

One thing life has taught me: if you are interested, you never have to look for new interests. They come to you. When you are genuinely interested in one thing, it will always lead to something else.

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.

I believe that anyone can conquer fear by doing the things he fears to do ...

Remember always that you have not only the right to be an individual; you have an obligation to be one. You cannot make any useful contribution in life unless you do this.

Light a candle instead of cursing the darkness.

It's your life-but only if you make it so.

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

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

Do something that scares you everyday.

A stumbling block to the pessimist is a stepping-stone to the optimist.

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.

When you cease to make a contribution, you begin to die.

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

Pit race against race, religion against religion, prejudice against prejudice. Divide and conquer! We must not let that happen here.

Today is the oldest you've ever been, and the youngest you'll ever be again.

The Marines I have seen around the world have the cleanest bodies, the filthiest minds, the highest morale, and the lowest morals of any group of animals I have ever seen. Thank God for the United States Marine Corps!

It takes as much energy to wish as it does to plan.

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.

Lest I keep my complacent way I must remember somewhere out there a person died for me today. As long as there must be war, I ask and I must answer was I worth dying for?

Courage is exhilarating.

All of life is a constant education.

There is not human being from whom we cannot learn something if we are interested enough to dig deep.

Every time you meet a situation you think at the time it is an impossibility and you go through the tortures of the damned, once you have met it and lived through it, you find that forever after you are freer than you were before.

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.

It is better to light a single candle than to curse the darkness.

We do not have to become heroes overnight. Just a step at a time, meeting each thing that comes up, seeing it as not as dreadful as it appears, discovering that we have the strength to stare it down.

The giving of love is an education in itself.

The bible says no man can take your joy. That means no person can make you live with a negative attitude. No circumstance, no adversity can force you to live in despair. As Eleanor Roosevelt, wife of wheelchair-bound President Franklin D. Roosevelt, often said, ‘No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.

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.

I have never felt that anything really mattered but knowing that you stood for the things in which you believed and had done the very best you could.

Don't call a woman a bitch. Call her an ass-hole. It still gets your point across and it's not sexist.

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

I am who I am today because of the choices I made yesterday.

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

We have to face the fact that either all of us are going to die together or we are going to learn to live together, and if we are to live together we have to talk.

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.

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 any attention to you. It's your attention to yourself that is so stultifying. But you have to disregard yourself as completely as possible. If you fail the first time then you'll just have to try harder the second time. After all, there's no real reason why you should fail. Just stop thinking about yourself.

Learn from the mistakes of others. You can't live long enough to make them all yourself.

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

The only things one can admire at length are those one admires without knowing why.

Character building begins in our infancy and continues until death.

You must do the thing you think you cannot do.

You should always own a black dress because no one ever remembers a black dress.

There are no have-to's, just choices

Never be bored, and you will never be boring.

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.

Be confident, not certain

I could not at any age be content to take my place in a corner by the fireside and simply look on.

Eleanor Roosevelt’s determination to rise above her personal pain gave the world one of its great leaders.

You always admire what you really don't understand.

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

I am convinced that every effort must be made in childhood to teach the young to use their own minds. For one thing is sure: If they don't make up their minds, someone will do it for them.

America is all about speed. Hot, nasty, badass speed.

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

He who learns but does not think is lost. He who thinks but does not learn is in great danger.

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.

Absence makes the heart grow fonder.

No one can make you feel inferior without your permission.

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.

If you can develop this ability to see what you look at, to understand its meaning, to readjust your knowledge to this new information, you can continue to learn and to grow as long as you live and you’ll have a wonderful time doing it.

FDR Unmasked is first to present convincing evidence of Roosevelt’s battle with prostate cancer, underpinned by FBI memoranda and reliable firsthand information from multiple physicians - even a shocking admission by Eleanor Roosevelt to actress Veronica Lake that her husband was being treated for the disease.

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.

It wasn’t always that way for the wives of powerful men. Prior to the 1960s, the press generally kept mum about the sex lives of politicians. When Eleanor Roosevelt discovered her husband’s affair by reading a love letter, she kept it to herself — and used it to gain the upper hand in her marriage, which had the additional benefit of setting her free to pursue writing and social activism.