Eleanor Roosevelt Quotes

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

A good leader inspires people to have confidence in the leader, a great leader inspires people to have confidence in themselves.

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

No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

A woman is like a tea bag - you can't tell how strong she is until you put her in hot water.

If human beings can be trained for cruelty and greed and a belief in power which comes through hate and fear and force, certainly we can train equally well for greatness and mercy and the power of love which comes because of the strength of the good qualities to be found in the soul of every human being.

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!

True patriotism springs from a belief in the dignity of the individual, freedom and equality not only for Americans but for all people on earth, universal brotherhood and good will, and a constant and earnest striving toward the principles and ideals on which this country was founded.

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.

Nothing has ever been achieved by the person who says, ‘It can’t be done.’

Tomorrow is a mystery. Today is a gift. That is why it is called the present.

Do one thing every day that scares you.

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

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

Where, after all, do universal human rights begin? In small places, close to home.

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 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.

When you 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.'

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

When you have decided what you believe, what you feel must be done, have the courage to stand alone and be counted

Caring comes from being able to put yourself in the position of the other person.

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

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

It's your life - but only if you make it so. The standards by which you live must be your own standards, your own values, your own convictions in regard to what is right and wrong, what is true and false, what is important and what is trivial. When you adopt the standards and the values of someone else . . . you surrender your own integrity. You become, to the extent of your surrender, less of a human being.

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

With the new day comes new strength and new thoughts.

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

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.

Character building begins in our infancy and continues until death.

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 ... 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.

For our own success to be real, it must contribute to the success of others.

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

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

Women are like tea bags.They do not know how strong they are until they get into hot water.

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.

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

One of the best ways of enslaving a people is to keep them from education... The second way of enslaving a people is to suppress the sources of information, not only by burning books but by controlling all the other ways in which ideas are transmitted.

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.

Anger is one letter short of danger.

You rarely achieve finality. If you did, life would be over, but as you strive new visions open before you, new possibilities for the satisfaction of living.

You can often change your circumstances by changing your attitude

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

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

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