Eleanor Roosevelt

No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.

Do what you feel in your heart to be right- for you'll be criticized anyway. You'll be damned if you do and damned if you don't.

With the new day comes new strength and new thoughts.

The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.

To handle yourself, use your head; to handle others, use your heart.

You must do the things you think you cannot do.

It isn't enough to talk about peace. One must believe in it. And it isn't enough to believe in it. One must work at it.

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.

Remember always that you not only have the right to be an individual, you have an obligation to be one.

The giving of love is an education in itself.

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 lived through this horror. I can take the next thing that comes along.'

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

It is better to light a candle than curse the darkness.

Hate and force cannot be in just a part of the world, without having an effect on the rest of it.

I think at a child's birth if a mother could ask a fairy godmother to endow it with the most useful gift, that gift should be curiosity.

One's philosophy is not best expressed in words, it is expressed in the choices one makes... and the choices we make are ultimately our responsibility.

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.

Have convictions. Be friendly. Stick to your beliefs as they stick to theirs. Work as hard as they do.

There are practical little things in housekeeping which no man really understands.

Women are like teabags. We don't know our true strength until we are in hot water!

Ambition is pitiless. Any merit that it cannot use it finds despicable.

It is not more vacation we need - it is more vocation.

Never allow a person to tell you no who doesn't have the power to say yes.

The Bible illustrated by Dore occupied many of my hours - and I think probably gave me many nightmares.

You can never really live anyone else's life not even your child's. The influence you exert is through your own life and what you've become yourself.

In the long run we shape our lives and we shape ourselves. The process never ends until we die. And the choices we make are ultimately our own responsibility.

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

I have spent many years of my life in opposition and I rather like the role.

In all our contacts it is probably the sense of being really needed and wanted which gives us the greatest satisfaction and creates the most lasting bond.

Autobiographies are only useful as the lives you read about and analyze may suggest to you something that you may find useful in your own journey through life.

Old age has deformities enough of its own. It should never add to them the deformity of vice.

When life is too easy for us we must beware or we may not be ready to meet the blows which sooner or later come to everyone rich or poor.

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

What one has to do usually can be done.

Justice cannot be for one side alone but must be for both.

Perhaps nature is our best assurance of immortality.

My experience has been that work is almost the best way to pull oneself out of the depths.

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

The battle for the individual rights of women is one of long standing and none of us should countenance anything which undermines it.

It is not fair to ask of others what you are not willing to do yourself.

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

Campaign behavior for wives: Always be on time. Do as little talking as humanly possible. Lean back in the parade car so everybody can see the president.

When will our consciences grow so tender that we will act to prevent human misery, rather than avenge it?

Understanding is a two-way street.

The only things one can admire at length are those one admires without knowing why.

Great minds discuss ideas, average minds discuss events, small minds discuss people.

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.

We are afraid to care too much for fear that the other person does not care at all.

Life must be lived and curiosity kept alive. One must never for whatever reason turn his back on life.

I believe that anyone can conquer fear by doing the things he fears to do provided he keeps doing them until he gets a record of successful experience behind him.

When you cease to make a contribution you begin to die.

Too often the great decisions are originated and given form in bodies made up wholly of men or so completely dominated by them that whatever of special value women have to offer is shunted aside without expression.

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

I think that somehow we learn who we really are and then live with that decision.

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.

It takes as much energy to wish as it does to plan.

Friendship with ones self is all important because without it one cannot be friends with anyone else in the world.

I'm so glad I never feel important it does complicate life!

I used to tell my husband that if he could make me 'understand' something it would be clear to all the other people in the country.

A little simplification would be the first step toward rational living I think.

Actors are one family over the entire world.

Freedom makes a huge requirement of every human being. With freedom comes responsibility. For the person who is unwilling to grow up the person who does not want to carry is own weight this is a frightening prospect.

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

You have to accept whatever comes and the only important thing is that you meet it with courage and with the best that you have to give.

If life were predictable it would cease to be life and be without flavor.

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.

Happiness is not a goal, it is a by-product.

I once had a rose named after me and I was very flattered. But I was not pleased to read the description in the catalogue: no good in a bed but fine up against a wall.

Probably the happiest period in life most frequently is in middle age when the eager passions of youth are cooled and the infirmities of age not yet begun, as we see that the shadows which are at morning and evening so large almost entirely disappear at midday.

The only advantage of not being too good a housekeeper is that your guests are so pleased to feel how very much better they are.