Eleanor Roosevelt Quotes

Understanding is a two-way street.

Every day do something that frightens you.

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 attention to you.

Curiosity must be kept alive.

We face the future fortified with the lessons we have learned from the past. It is today that we must create the world of the future.

You always admire what you really don't understand. - Eleanor Roosevelt

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

Courage is exhilarating.

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

Develop a skin as thick as a rhinoceros hide!

Women are like tea bags: put them in hot water and they get stronger.

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

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.

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

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.

You can't move so fast that you try to change the mores faster than people can accept it.

Usefulness, whatever form it may take, is the price we should pay for the air we breathe and the food we eat and the privilege of being alive.

I never waste time looking back.

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

Make the most of What you have, When you have it, Where you are.

Do not be afraid of mistakes, provided you do not make the same one twice.

To undo a mistake is always harder than not to create one originally but we seldom have the foresight. Therefore we have no choice but to try to correct our past mistakes.

If we fail to meet our problems here, no one else in the world will do so. If we fail, the heart goes out of progressives throughout the world.

As with all children, the feeling that I was useful was perhaps the greatest joy I experienced.

Life was meant to be lived.

I never met Mahatma Gandhi, but, I think everyone felt they knew him even if they hadn't met him.

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.

The most important thing in any relationship is not what you get but what you give.... In any case, the giving of love is an education in itself.

The only joy in this hard life is serving others.

A guest is really good or bad because of the host or hostess who makes being a guest an easy or a difficult task.

The mind must be trained, rather than the memory.

Have convictions. Be friendly. Stick to your beliefs as they stick to theirs. Work as hard as they do.

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

Actors are one family over the entire world.

My experience has been that work is almost the best way to pull oneself out of the depths.

I can not believe that war is the best solution. No one won the last war, and no one will win the next war.

No man is defeated without until he has first been defeated within.

Success must include two things: the development of an individual to his utmost potentiality and a contribution of some kind to one's world.

There is nothing to regret, either for those who go, or for those who stay behind — only an inheritance of good accomplishment to be lived up to by those who carry a loving memory in their hearts.

I have always felt that it was important that everyone who was a worker join a labor organization.

It is not more vacation we need — it is more vocation.

You'll be "damned if you do, and damned if you don't."

Sailors have the cleanest bodies and the filthiest minds.

It is so much easier to be enthusiastic than to reason!

I'm so glad I never feel important, it does complicate life!

Choose a challenge instead of competence

Happiness is not a goal, it is a by-product. Paradoxically, the one sure way not to be happy is deliberately to map out a way of life in which one would please oneself completely and exclusively.

Autobiographies are only useful as the lives you read about and analyze may suggest to you something that you may find useful in your own journey through life.

If anyone were to ask me what I want out of life I would say- the opportunity for doing something useful, for in no other way, I am convinced, can true happiness be attained.

The kind of man who thinks that helping with the dishes is beneath him will also think that helping with the baby is beneath him, and then he certainly is not going to be a very successful father.