Quotes from Eleanor Roosevelt

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.

But the withholding of information from a child either frustrates him or makes him seek it for himself. And the trouble with the latter method is that it is apt to make the child feel both guilty and dishonest.

To respect one's fellow men is perhaps more difficult than to 'love' them in a wide, vague sense. In fact, it is possible that to feel respect for mankind is better than to feel love for it. Love can often be misguided and do as much harm as good, but respect can do only good. It assumes that the other person's stature is as large as one's own, his rights as reasonable, his needs as important.

A man can protect himself with fists or sword but his best weapon is his intellect.

If the mind is clean, the body can take care of itself.

It has always seemed to me a great pity that man's noblest instincts, his heroic self-sacrifice, his capacity to unite with his neighbor in a common cause, emerge only in times of disaster, such as war and fire and flood.

I miss you greatly dear. The nicest time of day is when I write to you. You have a stormier time than I do but I miss you as much, I think. . . . Please keep most of your heart in Washington as long as I'm here for most of mine is with you!

Often people have asked me, "How do you recover from disaster?" I don't know any answer except the obvious one: You do it by meeting it and going on. From each you learn something, from each you acquire additional strength and confidence in yourself to meet the next one when it comes.

WE ALL create the person we become by our choices as we go through life.

A good leader inspires people to have confidence in the leader; a great leader inspires people to have confidence in themselves.

It is an important part of one's personal choices to decide to widen the circle of one's acquaintances whenever one can.

A woman is like a teabag. You can't tell how strong she is until you put her in hot water.

If you step on other people's necks to get rich, or barter your personal honor, then it is others who pay for your success and you can hardly call it your own. If, however, you build something that is of benefit to other people, give them an opportunity to rise with you on your upward climb, you make a contribution.

For one thing we know beyond all doubt: Nothing has ever been achieved by the person who says, "It can't be done.

Each of us, ultimately, is responsible in large part for the welfare of his community, for the kind of government he has, for the world he lives in.

But the courage to go against a sweep of feeling, to be an awkward minority, to stand up and be counted, even when it makes one unpopular, is not as prevalent as it should be. We have a long way to go to achieve responsible citizenship and common self-respecting humanity.

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.

I became a much more ardent citizen and feminist than anyone about me in the intermediate years would have dreamed possible. I had learned that if you wanted to institute any kind of reform, you could get far more attention if you had a vote than if you lacked one.

We overlook the two major factors: they rarely know what we are talking about when we speak of freedom in the abstract; their most pressing problem, from birth to death, now as it always has been, is hunger.

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.

To be mature you have to realize what you value most. Not to arrive at a clear understanding of one's own values is a tragic waste. You have missed the whole point of what life is for.

A woman is like a tea bag; you never know how strong it is until it's in hot water.

Do one thing every day that scares you.

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.