Eleanor Roosevelt Quotes

One should always sleep in all of one's guest beds, to make sure that they are comfortable. (11 September 1941)

Tomorrow is a mystery. Today is a gift. That's why we call it 'The Present'.

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.

Character building begins in our infancy and continues until death.

How odd it must seem to Mr. Balfour to be paying honor to the memory of the man who had severed from the mother country some rather profitable colonies, but he was graceful and adequate in this rather peculiar situation. Only when someone on the lawn at Mount Vernon told him the story of George Washington’s throwing a silver dollar across the Potomac to the other shore, did his eyes twinkle as he responded, “My dear sir, he accomplished an even greater feat than that. He threw a sovereign across the ocean!

There is a wonderful word, why?, that children use. All children. When they stop using it, the reason, too often, is that no one bothered to answer them, no one tried to keep alive one of the most important attributes a person can have: interest in the world around him.

It seems to me of great importance to teach children respect for life. Towards this end, experiments on living animals in classrooms should be stopped. To encourage cruelty in the name of science can only destroy the finer emotions of affection and sympathy, and breed an unfeeling callousness in the young towards suffering in all living creatures.

One reason for this ability to cope with disaster is that nothing ever happens to us except what happens in our minds. Unhappiness is an inward, not an outward, thing. It is as independent of circumstances as is happiness. Consider the truly happy people you know. I think it is unlikely that you will find that circumstances have made them happy. They have made themselves happy in spite of circumstances.

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

You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you stop to really look fear in the face... Do the thing you think you cannot do.

Every time you meet a crisis and live through it, you make it simpler for the next time. If you draw back and say, “I am afraid to do that,” because you might do or say something wrong or you might make a mistake, you will become timid and negative as a person.

If man is to be liberated to enjoy more leisure, he must also be prepared to enjoy this leisure fully and creatively. For people to have more time to read, to take part in their civic obligations, to know more about how their government functions and who their officials are might mean in a democracy a great improvement in the democratic processes. Let's begin, then, to think how we can prepare old and young for these new opportunities. Let's not wait until they come upon us suddenly and we have a crisis that we will be ill prepared to meet. (5 November 1958)

At all times, day by day, we have to continue fighting for freedom of religion, freedom of speech, and freedom from want — for these are things that must be gained in peace as well as in war. (15 April 1943)

We gain courage and wisdom from every instance in which we stop to look fear in the face.

Lest I keep my complacent way, I must remember somewhere out there a person died for me today, As long as there must be war, I ask and I must answer was I worth dying for today?