Quotes from Eleanor Roosevelt

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

Only a man's character is the real criterion of worth.

Success must include two things: the development of an individual to his utmost potentiality and a contribution of some kind to one's world.

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.

Tomorrow is a mystery. Today is a gift. That is why it is called the present.

THE GREATEST GIVE YOU CAN GIVE A CHILD IS AN IMAGINATION

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 man is defeated without until he has first been defeated within.

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

Great minds talk about ideas; small minds talk about people

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

I could not, at any age, be content to take my place by the fireside and simply look on. Life was meant to be lived.

Nothing has ever been achieved by the person who says, It can't be done.

You wouldn't worry so much about what others think of you if you realized how seldom they do.

I think I have a good deal of my Uncle Theodore in me, because I could not, at any age, be content to take my place by the fireside and simply look on.

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.

Anyone who knows history, particularly the history of Europe, will, I think, recognize that the domination of education or of government by any one particular religious faith is never a happy arrangement for the people.

No one can make you feel inferior without your consent." ? Eleanor Roosevelt, This is My Story

Obedience may have its uses, but it is no substitute for willing, uncoerced co-operation.

One thing life has taught me: if you are interested, you never have to look for new interests. They come to you. They will gravitate as automatically as the needle to the north. Somehow, it is unnecessary, in any cold-blooded sense, to sit down and put your head in your hands and plan them. All you need to do is to be curious, receptive, eager for experience. And there's one strange thing: when you are genuinely interested in one thing, it will always lead to something else.

I wish with all my heart that every child could be so imbued with a sense of the adventure of life that each change, each readjustment, each surprise--good or bad--that came along would be welcomed as part of the whole enthralling experience.

If you want a world ruled by law and not by force you must build up, from the very grassroots, a respect for law.

It's your life—but only if you make it so. The standards by which you live must be your own standards, your own values, your own convictions in regard to what is right and wrong, what is true and false, what is important and what is trivial. When you adopt the standards and the values of someone else or a community or a pressure group, you surrender your own integrity. You become, to the extent of your surrender, less of a human being.

You can't move so fast that you try to change the mores faster than people can accept it. That doesn't mean you do nothing, but it means that you do the things that need to be done according to priority.