Eleanor Roosevelt Quotes

You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face.

Today, living and learning must go hand in hand. Each new bit of knowledge, each new experience is an extra tool in meeting new problems and working them out.

What is going on in the Un-American Activities Committee worries me primarily because little people have become frightened and we find ourselves living in the atmosphere of a police state, where people close doors before they state what they think or look over their shoulders apprehensively before they express an opinion.
I have been one of those who have carried the fight for complete freedom of information in the United Nations. And while accepting the fact that some of our press, our radio commentators, our prominent citizens and our movies may at times be blamed legitimately for things they have said and done, still I feel that the fundamental right of freedom of thought and expression is essential. If you curtail what the other fellow says and does, you curtail what you yourself may say and do.
In our country we must trust the people to hear and see both the good and the bad and to choose the good. The Un-American Activities Committee seems to me to be better for a police state than for the USA. (29 October 1947)

Given half a chance, the young, I think, can be trusted not only to accept political responsibility, but to welcome it, for with each effort to shoulder a burden comes strength, and with strength comes confidence. With confidence enough, a nation is invincible. No man is defeated without until he has first been defeated within.

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)

To leave the world richer — that is the ultimate success.

When we admit that one can not retrace one’s steps and live life over again, we may accept the fact that we might as well savor it and enjoy it as we go along and not always be striving for something in the future which after all we may never achieve nor enjoy.

In 1937, about the time he brought Jimmy to Washington, Franklin became much troubled over the decisions that the Supreme Court was rendering. His advisers were divided, some of them feeling that it was unwise to have any change made in the Court. Franklin felt that if it was going to be possible to pass progressive legislation only to have it declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court, no progress could be made. He also felt that people became too conservative as they grew older and that they should not be allowed to continue indefinitely to wield great power.

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.

There is nothing to regret - either for those who go or for those who are left behind

I think everyone, at some time in his life, has this happen to him, comes face to face with the bitter realization that he has failed in something that means a tremendous amount and probably in a relation that is close to him. Life teaches you that you cannot attain real maturity until you are ready to accept this harsh knowledge, this limitation in yourself, and make the difficult adjustment. Either you must learn to allow someone else to meet the need, without bitterness or envy, and accept it; or somehow you must make yourself learn to meet it. If you refuse to accept the limitation in yourself, you will be unable to grow beyond this point.

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. And not to simply be what is generally called a “success”.

Or perhaps one can learn only by one’s own mistakes. The essential thing is to learn. Learning and living.

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

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