Eleanor Roosevelt Quotes

“The kind of propaganda that some of the religious groups, aided and abetted by the opposition, put forth in that campaign utterly disgusted me. If I needed anything to show me what prejudice can do to the intelligence of human beings that campaign was the best lesson I could have had.”

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

“The mind must be trained, rather than the memory.”

“Usefulness, whatever form it may take, is the price we should pay for the air we breathe and the food we eat and the privilege of being alive.”

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

“Curiously enough, it is often the people who refuse to assume any responsibility who are apt to be the sharpest critics of those who do.”

“No one is all-knowing and therefore all of us need both love and charity.”

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

“Be flexible, but stick to your principles.”

“I can not believe that war is the best solution. No one won the last war, and no one will win the next war.”

“Long ago, there was a noble word, liberal, which derives from the word free. Now a strange thing happened to that word. A man named Hitler made it a term of abuse, a matter of suspicion, because those who were not with him were against him, and liberals had no use for Hitler. And then another man named McCarthy cast the same opprobrium on the word. ... We must cherish and honor the word free or it will cease to apply to us.”

“It seems to me of great importance to teach children respect for life.”

“Think as little as possible about yourself and as much as possible about other people.”

“It is a brave thing to have courage to be an individual; it is also, perhaps, a lonely thing. But it is better than not being an individual, which is to be nobody at all.”

“Anyone who has gone through great suffering is bound to have a greater sympathy and understanding of the problems of mankind.”

“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.”

“Of course Mahatma Gandhi you might say did not have so much physical vigor but he certainly seemed to have extraordinary resistance, which perhaps is rather different from physical vigor.”

“It seems to me of great importance to teach children respect for life. Towards this end, experiments on living animals in classrooms should be stopped. To encourage cruelty in the name of science can only destroy the finer emotions of affection and sympathy, and breed an unfeeling callousness in the young towards suffering in all living creatures.”

“Every age is an unknown country.”

“... the next war will be a war in which people not armies will suffer, and our boasted, hard-earned civilization will do us no good. Cannot the women rise to this great opportunity and work now, and not have the double horror, if another war comes, of losing their loved ones, and knowing that they lifted no finger when they might have worked hard?”

“For all of us, as we grow older, perhaps the most important thing is to keep alive our love of others and to believe that our love and interest are as vitally necessary to them as to us. This is what makes us keep on growing and refills the fountains of energy.”

“As for accomplishments, I just did what I had to do as things came along.”

“The destiny of human rights is in the hands of all our citizens in all our communities.”

“A day out-of-doors, someone I loved to talk with, a good book and some simple food and music - that would be rest.”

“...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.”