Eleanor Roosevelt Quotes

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

~ Eleanor Roosevelt

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.

~ Eleanor Roosevelt

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

~ 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

No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.

~ 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

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.

~ Eleanor Roosevelt

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

~ Eleanor Roosevelt

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

~ Eleanor Roosevelt

Light a candle instead of cursing the darkness.

~ Eleanor Roosevelt

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

~ Eleanor Roosevelt

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.

~ Eleanor Roosevelt

Do one thing every day that scares you.

~ Eleanor Roosevelt

With the new day comes new strength and new thoughts.

~ Eleanor Roosevelt

You can not live at all if you do not learn to adapt yourself to your life as it happens to be.

~ Eleanor Roosevelt

All of life is a constant education.

~ Eleanor Roosevelt

There is a growing wave in this country of fear, and of intolerance which springs from fear. Sometimes it is a religious intolerance, sometimes it is a racial intolerance, but all intolerance grows from the same roots.

~ Eleanor Roosevelt

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

~ Eleanor Roosevelt

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

~ Eleanor Roosevelt

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.

~ Eleanor Roosevelt

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

~ Eleanor Roosevelt

Good leaders inspire people to have confidence in their leader. Great leaders inspire people to have confidence in themselves.

~ Eleanor Roosevelt

I feel that the care of libraries and the use of books, and the knowledge of books, is a tremendously vital thing, and that we who deal with books and who love books have a great opportunity to bring about something in this country which is more vital here than anywhere else, because we have the chance to make a democracy that will be a real democrac.

~ Eleanor Roosevelt

I feel that the care of libraries and the use of books, and the knowledge of books, is a tremendously vital thing, and that we who deal with books and who love books have a great opportunity to bring about something in this country which is more vital here than anywhere else, because we have the chance to make a democracy that will be a real democracy.

~ Eleanor Roosevelt

The encouraging thing is that every time you meet a situation, though you may 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 ever were before. If you can live through that, you can live through anything. You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face.

~ Eleanor Roosevelt

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

~ 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 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.

~ Eleanor Roosevelt

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.

~ Eleanor Roosevelt

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

~ Eleanor Roosevelt

It seems to me that I cannot afford, as a self-respecting individual, to refuse to do a thing merely because it will make me disliked or bring down a storm of criticism on my head.

~ Eleanor Roosevelt

This is your life, not someone else's. It is your own feeling of what is important, not what people will say. Sooner or later, you are bound to discover that you cannot please all of the people around you all of the time. Some of t hem will attribute to you motives you never dreamed of. Some of them will misinterpret your words and actions, making them completely alien to you. So you had better learn fairly early that you must not expect to have everyone understand what you say and what you do.

~ Eleanor Roosevelt

We have to make these young people (of the Depression) feel that they are necessary. (They should be given) certain things for which youth craves – the chance for self-sacrifice for an ideal.

~ Eleanor Roosevelt

You not only have a right to be an individual. You have a responsibility.

~ Eleanor Roosevelt

If man is to be liberated to enjoy more leisure, he must also be prepared to enjoy this leisure fully and creatively.

~ Eleanor Roosevelt

America is not a pile of goods, more luxury, more comforts, a better telephone system, a greater number of cars. America is a dream of greater justice and opportunity for the average man and, if we can not obtain it, all our otherachievements amount to nothing.

~ Eleanor Roosevelt

What one has to do usually can be done.

~ Eleanor Roosevelt

Love can often be misguided and do as much harm as good, but respect can do only good. It assumes that the other person's stature is as large as one's own, his rights as reasonable, his needs as important.

~ Eleanor Roosevelt

If you want a world ruled by law and not by force you must build up, from the very grassroots, a respect for law.

~ Eleanor Roosevelt

...Learn to concentrate, to give all your attention to the thing at hand, and then to be able to put it aside and go on to the next thing without confusion. My husband said that being President of the United States meant that you saw more kinds of people, took up more subjects, and learn more about a variety of things than anyone else. But it required complete concentration on the person you were with and on what he was saying. When that person left the room, you pulled down a shade in your mind, and you were ready, with your attention free, for what the next person had to say. You might have to shift from banking to forestry, but each subject had the attention and concentration it required and each, in turn, was put in the back of the mind, ready to be called upon when needed.

~ Eleanor Roosevelt

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.

~ Eleanor Roosevelt