Eleanor Roosevelt Quotes

“What you don't do can be a destructive force.”

“Your ambition should be to get as much life out of living as you possibly can, as much enjoyment, as much interest, as much experience, as much understanding. Not simply be what is generally called a 'success.'”

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

“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.”

“Sometimes I wonder if we shall ever grow up in our politics and say definite things which mean something, or whether we shall always go on using generalities to which everyone can subscribe, and which mean very little.”

“Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people.”

“We all create the person we become by our choices as we go through life. In a real sense, by the time we are adults, we are the sum total of the choices we have made.”

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

“It is a rather curious thing to have to divide one's life into personal and official compartments and temporarily put the personal side into its hidden compartment to be taken out again when one's official duties are at an end.”

“The most important thing in any relationship is not what you get but what you give.... In any case, the giving of love is an education in itself.”

“The more we simplify our material needs the more we are free to think of other things.”

“When you 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.'”

“Get out of the way as quickly as you're not needed.”

“I am who I am today because of the choices I made yesterday.”

“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.”

“When you have decided what you believe, what you feel must be done, have the courage to stand alone and be counted”

“Justice cannot be for one side alone, but must be for both.”

“Anyone who thinks must think of the next war as they would of suicide.”

“Do the things that interest you and do them with all your heart. Don't be concerned about whether people are watching you or criticizing you. The chances are that they aren't paying attention to you.”

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

“Courage is more exhilarating than fear, and in the long run, it is easier.”

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

“Many people will walk in and out of your life, but only true friends will leave footprints in your heart”

“It seems to me that it is the basic right of any human being to work.”

“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.”