Eleanor Roosevelt Quotations | Page 4

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

The morality of a [political] party must grow out of the conscience and the participation of the voters.

I do not want church groups controlling the schools of our country. They must remain free.

Sailors have the cleanest bodies and the filthiest minds.

...conservation of land and conservation of people frequently go hand in hand.

I consider those are rich who are doing something they feel worthwhile and which they enjoy doing.

Our real battlefield today is Asia and our real battle is the one between democracy and communism. . . . We have to prove to the world and particularly to downtrodden areas of the world which are the natural prey to the principles of communist economics that democracy really brings about happier and better conditions for the people as a whole.

A democratic form of government, a democratic way of life, presupposes free public education over a long period; it presupposes also an education for personal responsibility that too often is neglected.

I believe that it is essential to our leadership in the world and to the development of true democracy in our country to have no discrimination in our country whatsoever. This is most important in the schools of our country.

Home-making today should have a background of scientific training because only in this way can real efficiency be achieved. The average girl wants to be able to keep her house with the least possible strain, and in order to do this she must have good training. This can best be achieved by taking a good course in home economics.

Our children should learn the general framework of their government and then they should know where they come in contact with the government, where it touches their daily lives and where their influence is exerted on the government. It must not be a distant thing, someone else's business, but they must see how every cog in the wheel of a democracy is important and bears its share of responsibility for the smooth running of the entire machine.

If you prepare yourself at every point as well as you can, with whatever means you may have, however meager they may seem, you will be able to grasp opportunity for broader experience when it appears. Without preparation you cannot do it.

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

I learned then that practically no one in the world is entirely bad or entirely good, and that motives are often more important than actions.

I have cherished the ideal a democratic and free society . . . it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die.

Life's not about expecting, hoping and wishing. It's about doing, being and becoming. It's about t Learn from the mistakes of others. You can't live long enough to make them all yourself.

If the use of leisure time is confined to looking at TV for a few extra hours every day, we will deteriorate as a people.

The mobilization of world opinion and methods of negotiation should be developed and used by every nation in order to strengthen the United Nations.

The greatest gift you can give a child is an imagination.

One of the best ways of enslaving a people is to keep them from education... The second way of enslaving a people is to suppress the sources of information, not only by burning books but by controlling all the other ways in which ideas are transmitted.

Smearing good people like Lauchlin Currie [former administrative assistant to President Roosevelt], Alger Hiss and others is, I think, unforgiveable... Anyone knowing Mr. Currie or Mr. Hiss, who are the two people whom I happen to know fairly well, would not need any denial on their part to know they are not Communists. Their records prove it.

We do not move forward by curtailing people's liberty because we are afraid of what they may do or say.

The things you refuse to meet today always come back at you later on, usually under circumstances which make the decision twice as difficult as it originally was.

Every woman in public life needs to develop skin as tough as rhinoceros hide,

Spiritual leadership should remain spiritual leadership and the temporal power should not become too important in any church.

Perhaps in His wisdom the Almighty is trying to show us that a leader may chart the way, may point out the road to lasting peace, but that many leaders and many peoples must do the building.

Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance.

I would not be happy unless I had some regular work to do every day and I imagine that I will always feel that way no matter how old I am.

This is a strange, little, complacent country [Switzerland], in many ways a USA in miniature but of course nearer the center of disturbance!

Keep us at tasks too hard for us that we may be driven to Thee for strength.

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

More people are ruined by victory, I imagine, than be defeat.

We will never have peace without friendship around the world.

The purpose of life afterall is to live it.

If you must compromise, compromise up.

It is not that you set the individual apart from society but that you recognize in any society that the individual must have rights that are guarded.

Those of us who believe in the right of any human being to belong to whatever church he sees fit, and to worship God in his own way, cannot be accused of prejudice when we do not want to see public education connected with religious control of the schools, which are paid for by taxpayers' money.

Develop a skin as thick as a rhinoceros hide!

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

It is equality of monotony which makes the strength of the British Isles.

We need our radicals.

The separation of church and state is extremely important to any of us who holds to the original traditions of our nation. . . . To change these traditions . . . would be harmful to our whole attitude of tolerance in the religious area. If we look at situations which have arisen in the past in Europe and other world areas, I think we will see the reason why it is wise to hold to our early traditions.

One of the blessings of age is to learn not to part on a note of sharpness, to treasure the moments spent with those we love, and to make them whenever possible good to remember, for time is short.

An economic policy which does not consider the well-being of all will not serve the purposes of peace and the growth of well-being among the people of all nations.

I have learned long ago to possess my soul in patience and accept the inevitable.

To some of us, hunger was more academic than real, but we must try to develop the ability to feel the urgency of such a situation.

My life can be so arranged that I can live on whatever I have. If I cannot live as I have lived in the past, I shall live differently, and living differently does not mean living with less attention to the things that make life gracious and pleasant or with less enjoyment of things of the mind.

At any age it does us no harm to look over our past shortcomings and plan to improve our characters and actions in the coming year.

Criticism ... makes very little dent upon me, unless I think there is some real justification and something should be done.

When you build a memorial, you build it not because the person wanted it, but for the future -- for generations who didn't know the man and didn't know the era in which he lived.

The hard part of loving is that one has to learn so often to let go of those we love, so they can do things, so they can grow, so they can return to us with an even richer, deeper love.

The labor movement has a great role to play in our country today.

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

When it's better for everyone, it's better for everyone.

When you are genuinely interested in one thing, it will always lead to something else.

I wonder if one of the penalties of growing older is that you become more and more conscious that nothing is very permanent.

About the only value the story of my life may have is to show that one can, even without any particular gifts, overcome obstacles that seem insurmountable if one is willing to face the fact that they must be overcome.

No, I have never wanted to be a man. I have often wanted to be more effective as a woman, but I have never felt that trousers would do the trick!

The most important word in the English language is hope.

The important thing is neither your nationality nor the religion you professed, but how your faith translated itself in your life.

It is curious how much more interest can be evoked by a mixture of gossip, romance and mystery than by facts.

Friends, you and me... you brought another friend... and then there were three... we started our group... our circle of friends... and like that circle... there is no beginning or end.

Be flexible, but stick to your principles.

In the long run there is no more liberating, no more exhilarating experience than to determine one's position, state it bravely, and then act boldly.

Feelings, too, are facts. Emotion is a fact. Human experience is a fact. It is often possible to gain more real insight into human beings and their motivation by reading great fiction than by personal acquaintance.

The constant pressure to bring about conformity is a dangerous thing.

All big things in human history have been arrived at slowly and through many compromises.

One thing is for sure-none of the arts flourishes on censorship and repression. And by this time it should be evident that the American public is capable of doing its own censoring.

You do the things that need to be done according to priority.

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.

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

Some friends leave footprints in your heart

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

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.

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.

Be confident, not certain

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.

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.

Never be bored, and you will never be boring.

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.

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

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.

...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.

...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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

Absence makes the heart grow fonder

There are no have-to's, just choices

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

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

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