Friday, 11 November 2011

Eleanor Roosevelt Quotes


Wife of Franklin Roosevelt and a strong advocate of human rights (1884-1962)

"Nothing we learn in this world is ever wasted."

"No one can make you feel inferior without your consent."

"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 lived through this horror. I can take the next thing that comes along.'"

"With the new day comes new strength and new thoughts."

"Do what you feel in your heart to be right- for you'll be criticized anyway. You'll be damned if you do, and damned if you don't."

"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 should be curiosity."

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

"Hate and force cannot be in just a part of the world without having an effect on the rest of it."

"Sometimes I wonder if we shall ever grow up in our politics and say definite things which mean something, or whether we shall always go on using generalities to which everyone can subscribe, and which mean very little."

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

"Nothing we learn in this world is ever wasted."

"No one can make you feel inferior without your consent."

"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 lived through this horror. I can take the next thing that comes along.'"

"With the new day comes new strength and new thoughts."

"Do what you feel in your heart to be right- for you'll be criticized anyway. You'll be damned if you do, and damned if you don't."

"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 should be curiosity."

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

"Hate and force cannot be in just a part of the world without having an effect on the rest of it."

"Sometimes I wonder if we shall ever grow up in our politics and say definite things which mean something, or whether we shall always go on using generalities to which everyone can subscribe, and which mean very little."

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

"You must do the things you think you cannot do."

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

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

"For 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."

"We gain strength, and courage, and confidence by each experience in which we really stop to look fear in the face... we must do that which we think we cannot."

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

"Probably the happiest period in life most frequently is in middle age, when the eager passions of youth are cooled, and the infirmities of age not yet begun; as we see that the shadows, which are at morning and evening so large, almost entirely disappear at midday."

"Women are like teabags. We don't know our true strength until we are in hot water!"

"Absence makes the heart grow fonder."

"One's philosophy is not best expressed in words; it is expressed in the choices one makes... and the choices we make are ultimately our responsibility."

"I could not, at any age, be content to take my place by the fireside and simply look on. Life was meant to be lived. Curiousity must be kept alive. One must never, for whatever reason, turn his back on life."

"What is to give light must endure the burning."

"If you have any interests you can gain a wider audience for those interests while the goldfish bowl is yours!"

"When life is too easy for us, we must beware or we may not be ready to meet the blows which sooner or later come to everyone, rich or poor."

"You can't move so fast that you try to change the mores faster than people can accept it. That doesn't mean you do nothing, but it means that you do the things that need to be done according to priority."

"If, as I can't help suspecting, the dead also feel the pains of separation (and this may be one of their purgatorial sufferings), then for both lovers, and for all pairs of lovers without exception, bereavement is a universal and integral part of our experience of love."

"Too often the great decisions are originated and given form in bodies made up wholly of men, or so completely dominated by them that whatever of special value women have to offer is shunted aside without expression."

"Only a man's character is the real criterion of worth."

"I once 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."

"Understanding is a two-way street."

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

"It is not more vacation we need - it is more vocation."

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

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

"So I took an interest in politics, but I don't know whether I enjoyed it! It was a wife's duty to be interested in whatever interested her husband, whether it was politics, books, or a particular dish for dinner."

"Happiness is not a goal; it is a by-product."

"Campaign behavior for wives: Always be on time. Do as little talking as humanly possible. Lean back in the parade car so everybody can see the president."

"When all is said and done, and statesmen discuss the future of the world, the fact remains that people fight these wars."

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

"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 is own weight, this is a frightening prospect."

"Ambition is pitiless. Any merit that it cannot use it finds despicable."

"The giving of love is an education in itself."

"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."

"Old age has deformities enough of its own. It should never add to them the deformity of vice."

"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."

"A little simplification would be the first step toward rational living, I think."

"I used to tell my husband that, if he could make me 'understand' something, it would be clear to all the other people in the country."

"Anyone who knows history, particularly the history of Europe, will, I think, recognize that the domination of education or of government by any one particular religious faith is never a happy arrangement for the people."

"The Bible illustrated by Dore occupied many of my hours - and I think probably gave me many nightmares."

"I could never say in the morning, "I have a headache and cannot do thus and so". Headache or no headache, thus and so had to be done."

"The battle for the individual rights of women is one of long standing and none of us should countenance anything which undermines it."

"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."

"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."

"It's better to light a candle than to curse the darkness."

"Justice cannot be for one side alone, but must be for both."

"Actors are one family over the entire world."

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