Eleanor Roosevelt Quotations | Page 2

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.

Your ambition should be to get as much life out of living as you possibly can, as much enjoyment, as much interest, as much experience, as much understanding. Not simply be what is generally called a 'success.'

The word liberal comes from the word free. We must cherish and honor the word free or it will cease to apply to us.

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

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.

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.'

You never know anyone until you marry them.

Enjoy every minute you have with those you love, my dear, for no one can take joy that is past away from you. It will be there in your heart to live on when the dark days come.

I carried it (a revolver) religiously and during the summer I asked a friend, a man who had been one of Franklin's bodyguards in New York State, to give me some practice in target shooting so that if the need arose I would know how to use the gun.

The future is literally in our hands to mold as we like. But we cannot wait until tomorrow. Tomorrow is now.

All of life is a constant education.

All the water in the world cannot drown you unless it gets inside of you.

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.

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.

Life is like a parachute jump, you've got to get it right the first time.

I think if the people of this country can be reached with the truth, their judgment will be in favor of the many, as against the privileged few

Education is the cornerstone of liberty.

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.

Courage is more exhilarating than fear, and in the long run, it is easier.

Since everybody is an individual, nobody can be you. You are unique. No one can tell you how to use your time. It is yours. Your life is your own. You mold it. You make it.

You wouldn't worry so much about what others think of you if you realized how seldom they do.

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

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

If quitting smoking seems hard right now, it is exactly what you should start doing

If you approach each new person you meet in a spirit of adventure, you will find yourself endlessly fascinated by the new channels of thought and experience and personality that you encounter.

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

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

If you lose money you lose much, If you lose friends you lose more, If you lose faith you lose all.

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.

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.

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

Do one thing every day that scares you.

It is a curious thing in human experience, but to live through a period of stress and sorrow with another person, creates a bond which nothing seems able to break.

The trouble is that not enough people have come together with the firm determination to live the things which they say they believe.

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

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.

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

There is in every country an antipathy to the foreigner ...

Curiosity must be kept alive.

Life was meant to be lived.

Anyone who has gone through great suffering is bound to have a greater sympathy and understanding of the problems of mankind.

What I have learned from my own experience is that the most important ingredients in a child's education are curiosity, interest, imagination, and a sense of the adventure of life.

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

Nearly all great civilizations that perished did so because they had crystallized, because they were incapable of adapting themselves to new conditions, new methods, new points of view. It is as though people would rather die than change.

Democracy cannot be static. Whatever is static is dead.

Furnish an example, stop preaching, stop shielding, don't prevent self-reliance and initiative, allow your children to develop along thier own lines.

No one from the beginning of time has had security.

It is today that we create the world of the future.

We mast show by our behavior that we believe in equality and justice and that our religion teaches faith and love and charity to our fellow men. Here is where each of us has a job to do that must be done at home, because we can lose the battle on the soil of the United States just as surely as we can lose it in any one of the countries of the world.

You in the unions do not yet represent all of labor. But I hope some day you will, because I believe that it is through strength, through the fact that people who know what people need are working to make this country a better place for all people, that we will help the world to accept our leadership and understand that, under our form of government and through our way of life, we have something to offer them...

No one is all-knowing and therefore all of us need both love and charity.

The war for freedom will never really be won because the price of freedom is constant vigilance over ourselves and over our Government.

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

Everyone has the right to work, to free choice, to employment, to just and favorable conditions of work and to protectior against unemployment.

All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights...

All of us ... should remember that no amount of flag-waving, pledging allegiance, or fervent singing of the national anthem is evidence that we are patriotic in the real sense of the word. ... Outward behavior, while important, is not the real measure of a man's patriotism.

what we need in the world is manners ... I think that if, instead of preaching brotherly love, we preached good manners, we might get a little further. It sounds less righteous and more practical.

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.

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

To appear to be on the inside and know more than others about what is going on is a great temptation for most people. It is a rare person who is willing to seem to know less than he does ... Somehow, people seem to feel that it is belittling to their importance not to know more than other people.

There are three fundamentals for human happiness - love and faith, and work which will produce at least a minimum of material security. These things must be made possible for all human beings, men and women alike.

Our obligation to the world is, primarily, our obligation to our own future. Obviously, we cannot develop beyond a certain point unless other nations develop, too.

What we apparently have failed to grasp is that, in this new world in which we live, the collective hunger of great masses of people, wherever they may be, will affect our long-range welfare, just as though they were our own people.

We cannot exist as a little island of well-being in a world where two-thirds of the people go to bed hungry every night.

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. Curiosity must be kept alive. One must not, for whatever reason, turn his back on life." Another "No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.

Friendship with oneself is all important.

The will of the people shall be the basis of the authority of government...

The family is the natural and fundamental group unit of society and is entitled to protection by society and the State.

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

Everyone has the right to rest and leisure, including reasonable limitation of working hours and periodic holidays with pay.

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

We have reached a point today where labor-saving devices are good only when they do not throw the worker out of his job.

There are no have-to's, just choices

Absence makes the heart grow fonder

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

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

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

Each of us has... all the time there is. Those years, weeks, hours, are the sands in the glass running swiftly away. To let them drift through our fingers is tragic waste. To use them to the hilt, making them count for something, is the beginning of wisdom.

Do whatever comes your way to do as well as you can. Think as little as possible about yourself. Think as much as possible about other people. Dwell on things that are interesting. 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.

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.

If many of our young people have lost the excitement of the early settlers, who had a country to explore and develop, it is because no one remembers to tell them that the world has never been so challenging, so exciting... Perhaps the older generation is often to blame with its cautious warning: “Take a job that will give you security, not adventure.” But I say to the young: “Do not stop thinking of life as an adventure. You have no security unless you can live bravely, excitingly, and imaginatively; unless you can choose a challenge instead of a competence.

Mozart, who was buried in a pauper’s grave, was one of the greatest successes we know of, a man who in his early thirties had poured out his inexhaustible gift of music, leaving the world richer because he had passed that way. To leave the world richer—that is the ultimate success.

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

Each time you learn something new you must readjust the whole framework of your knowledge

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.

...no matter how avid they themselves may be for praise and appreciation, people are often niggardly in giving it to others, however merited it is.

...so much attention is paid to the aggressive sins, such as violence and cruelty, and greed with all their tragic effects, that too little attention is paid to the passive sins, such as apathy and laziness, which in the long run can have a more devastating and destructive effect upon society than the others.

Nothing alive can stand still, it goes forward or back. Life is interesting only as long as it is a process of growth; or, to put it another way, we can only grow as long as we are interested.

Every woman wants to be first to someone sometime in her life and that desire is the explanation for many strange things women do.

When you know to laugh and when to look upon things as too absurd to take seriously, the other person is ashamed to carry through even if he was serious about it.

Never be bored, and you will never be boring.

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.

Your life is your own. You mold it. You make it. All anyone can do is to point out ways and means which have been helpful to others. Perhaps they will serve as suggestions to stimulate your own thinking until you know what it is that will fulfill you, will help you to find out what you want to do with your life.

Be confident, not certain

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.

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.

You [future first ladies] will feel that you are no longer clothing yourself, you are dressing a public monument.

Some friends leave footprints in your heart

A candle can bring light to a dungeon but it can also be used to light a deadly marijuana cigarette.

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.