Eleanor Roosevelt (1884-1962)

Quotes

• Friendship with oneself is all-important, because without it one cannot be friends with anyone else in the world.

• You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience by which you really stop to 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.

• No man is defeated without until he is defeated within.

• 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 map of the world. Yet they are the world of the individual person: The neighbourhood he lives in; the school or college he attends; the factory, farm or office where he works. 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. Without concerted citizen action to uphold them close to home, we shall look in vain for progress in the larger world.

• You must do the things you think you cannot do.

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

• Great minds discuss ideas; Average minds discuss events; Small minds discuss people.

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

• 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.

• Learn from the mistakes of others. You can’t live long enough to make them all yourself.

• It is not fair to ask of others what you are unwilling to do yourself.

• You gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You are able to say to yourself, 'I have lived through this horror. I can take the next thing that comes along.' You must do the thing you think you cannot do.

• One thing life has taught me: if you are interested, you never have to look for new interests. They come to you. When you are genuinely interested in one thing, it will always lead to something else.

• 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.

• 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.

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

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

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

• Life was meant to be lived, and curiosity must be kept alive. One must never, for whatever reason, turn his back on life.

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