Anna Eleanor Roosevelt was born on the 11th of October, 1884 in New York, United States. She was an American political figure, diplomat and activist. Eleanor Roosevelt served as the First Lady of the United States from March 4, 1933, to April 12, 1945. She also served as United States Delegate to the United Nations General Assembly from 1945 to 1952.
Eleanor Roosevelt was widely respected in her later years, she was a controversial First Lady because of her outspokenness, particularly on civil rights for African-Americans. On a few occasions, she publicly disagreed with her husband’s policies.
She died on November 7, 1962 in East 74th Street, New York, United States. By the time of her death, Eleanor Roosevelt was regarded as “one of the most esteemed women in the world”.
Below, you will find a collection of famous Eleanor Roosevelt quotes and sayings.
80 Eleanor Roosevelt Quotes About Life, Leadership & Love
“A woman is like a tea bag; you never know how strong it is until it’s in hot water.” ― Eleanor Roosevelt Quote
“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.” ― Eleanor Roosevelt Quote
“Where, after all, do universal human rights begin? In small places, close to home – so close and so small that they cannot be seen on any maps of the world. Yet they are the world of the individual person; the neighborhood he lives in; the school or college he attends; the factory, farm, or office where he works. Such are the places where every man, woman, and child seeks equal justice, equal opportunity, equal dignity without discrimination. Unless these rights have meaning there, they have little meaning anywhere. Without concerted citizen action to uphold them close to home, we shall look in vain for progress in the larger world.” ― Eleanor Roosevelt Quote
“The purpose of life is to live it, to taste experience to the utmost, to reach out eagerly and without fear for newer and richer experience.” ― Eleanor Roosevelt Quote
“Many people will walk in and out of your life, but only true friends will leave footprints in your heart” ― Eleanor Roosevelt Quote
“If someone betrays you once, it’s their fault; if they betray you twice, it’s your fault.” ― Eleanor Roosevelt Quote
“Life was meant to be lived, and curiosity must be kept alive. One must never, for whatever reason, turn his back on life.” ― Eleanor Roosevelt Quote
“A mature person is one who does not think only in absolutes, who is able to be objective even when deeply stirred emotionally, who has learned that there is both good and bad in all people and in all things, and who walks humbly and deals charitably with the circumstances of life, knowing that in this world no one is all knowing and therefore all of us need both love and charity.” ― Eleanor Roosevelt Quote
“Never mistake knowledge for wisdom. One helps you make a living; the other helps you make a life. ” ― Eleanor Roosevelt Quote
“I believe that anyone can conquer fear by doing the things he fears to do …” ― Eleanor Roosevelt Quote
“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.” ― Eleanor Roosevelt Quote
“Every time you meet a situation you think at the time it is an impossibility and you go through the tortures of the damned, once you have met it and lived through it, you find that forever after you are freer than you were before.” ― Eleanor Roosevelt Quote
“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.” ― Eleanor Roosevelt Quote
“Will people ever be wise enough to refuse to follow bad leaders or to take away the freedom of other people?”― Eleanor Roosevelt Quote
“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.” ― Eleanor Roosevelt Quote
“If you can develop this ability to see what you look at, to understand its meaning, to readjust your knowledge to this new information, you can continue to learn and to grow as long as you live and you’ll have a wonderful time doing it.” ― Eleanor Roosevelt Quote
“Each of us has… all the time there is. Those years, weeks, hours, are the sands in the glass running swiftly away. To let them drift through our fingers is tragic waste. To use them to the hilt, making them count for something, is the beginning of wisdom.” ― Eleanor Roosevelt Quote
“If man is to be liberated to enjoy more leisure, he must also be prepared to enjoy this leisure fully and creatively.” ― Eleanor Roosevelt Quote
“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.” ― Eleanor Roosevelt Quote
“To be a citizen in a democracy, a human being must be given a healthy start.” ― Eleanor Roosevelt Quote
“…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.” ― Eleanor Roosevelt Quote
“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.” ― Eleanor Roosevelt Quote
“Up to a certain point it is good for us to know that there are people in the world who will give us love and unquestioned loyalty to the limit of their ability. I doubt, however, if it is good for us to feel assured of this without the accompanying obligation of having to justify this devotion by our behavior.” ― Eleanor Roosevelt Quote
“Every woman wants to be first to someone sometime in her life and that desire is the explanation for many strange things women do.” ― Eleanor Roosevelt Quote
“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.” ― Eleanor Roosevelt Quote
“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.” ― Eleanor Roosevelt Quote
“I could not at any age be content to take my place in a corner by the fireside and simply look on. ”― Eleanor Roosevelt Quote
“The only things one can admire at length are those one admires without knowing why.” ― Eleanor Roosevelt Quote
“I have never felt that anything really mattered but knowing that you stood for the things in which you believed and had done the very best you could.” ― Eleanor Roosevelt Quote
“Today is the oldest you’ve ever been, and the youngest you’ll ever be again.” ― Eleanor Roosevelt Quote
“Pit race against race, religion against religion, prejudice against prejudice. Divide and conquer! We must not let that happen here.” ― Eleanor Roosevelt Quote
“A stumbling block to the pessimist is a stepping-stone to the optimist.” ― Eleanor Roosevelt Quote
“Remember always that you have not only the right to be an individual; you have an obligation to be one. You cannot make any useful contribution in life unless you do this.” ― Eleanor Roosevelt Quote
“When will our consciences grow so tender that we will act to prevent human misery rather than avenge it?” ― Eleanor Roosevelt Quote
“Once I 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.” ― Eleanor Roosevelt Quote
“It is not fair to ask of others what you are not willing to do yourself.”― Eleanor Roosevelt Quote
“Beautiful young people are accidents of nature, but beautiful old people are works of art. ” ― Eleanor Roosevelt Quote
“No matter how plain a woman may be, if truth and honesty are written across her face, she will be beautiful.” ― Eleanor Roosevelt Quote
“Do what you feel in your heart to be right – for you’ll be criticized anyway.” ― Eleanor Roosevelt Quote
“The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.” ― Eleanor Roosevelt Quote
“It takes courage to love, but pain through love is the purifying fire which those who love generously know. We all know people who are so much afraid of pain that they shut themselves up like clams in a shell and, giving out nothing, receive nothing and therefore shrink until life is a mere living death.” ― Eleanor Roosevelt Quote
“We are afraid to care too much, for fear that the other person does not care at all.” ― Eleanor Roosevelt Quote
“The reason that fiction is more interesting than any other form of literature, to those who really like to study people, is that in fiction the author can really tell the truth without humiliating himself.” ― Eleanor Roosevelt Quote
“You have to accept whatever comes, and the only important thing is that you meet it with the best you have to give.” ― Eleanor Roosevelt Quote
“Friendship with oneself is all important, because without it one cannot be friends with anyone else in the world.” ― Eleanor Roosevelt Quote
“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 would be curiosity.” ― Eleanor Roosevelt Quote
“People grow through experience if they meet life honestly and courageously. This is how character is built.” ― Eleanor Roosevelt Quote
“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 any attention to you. It’s your attention to yourself that is so stultifying. But you have to disregard yourself as completely as possible. If you fail the first time then you’ll just have to try harder the second time. After all, there’s no real reason why you should fail. Just stop thinking about yourself.” ― Eleanor Roosevelt Quote
“Lest I keep my complacent way I must remember somewhere out there a person died for me today. As long as there must be war, I ask and I must answer was I worth dying for?” ― Eleanor Roosevelt Quote
“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. ” ― Eleanor Roosevelt Quote
“We have to face the fact that either all of us are going to die together or we are going to learn to live together, and if we are to live together we have to talk.” ― Eleanor Roosevelt Quote
“You should always own a black dress because no one ever remembers a black dress.” ― Eleanor Roosevelt Quote
“Learn from the mistakes of others. You can’t live long enough to make them all yourself.” ― Eleanor Roosevelt Quote
“He who learns but does not think is lost. He who thinks but does not learn is in great danger.” ― Eleanor Roosevelt Quote
“The most unhappy people in the world are those who face the days without knowing what to do with their time. But if you have more projects than you have time for, you are not going to be an unhappy person. This is as much a question of having imagination and curiosity as it is of actually making plans.” ― Eleanor Roosevelt Quote
“When you adopt the standards and the values of someone else … you surrender your own integrity. You become, to the extent of your surrender, less of a human being.” ― Eleanor Roosevelt Quote
“We have reached a point today where labor-saving devices are good only when they do not throw the worker out of his job.” ― Eleanor Roosevelt Quote
“Each time you learn something new you must readjust the whole framework of your knowledge” ― Eleanor Roosevelt Quote
“Tomorrow is a mystery. Today is a gift. That is why it is called the present.” ― Eleanor Roosevelt Quote
“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.” ― Eleanor Roosevelt Quote
“A great deal of fear is a result of just “not knowing.” We do not know what is involved in a new situation. We do not know whether we can deal with it. The sooner we learn what it entails, the sooner we can dissolve our fear.” ― Eleanor Roosevelt Quote
“Nothing has ever been achieved by the person who says, It can’t be done.” ― Eleanor Roosevelt Quote
“Obedience may have its uses, but it is no substitute for willing, uncoerced co-operation.” ― Eleanor Roosevelt Quote
“Success must include two things: the development of an individual to his utmost potentiality and a contribution of some kind to one’s world.” ― Eleanor Roosevelt Quote
“I know that we will be the sufferers if we let great wrongs occur without exerting ourselves to correct them.” ― Eleanor Roosevelt Quote
“If anyone were to ask me what I want out of life I would say- the opportunity for doing something useful, for in no other way, I am convinced, can true happiness be attained.” ― Eleanor Roosevelt Quote
“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.” ― Eleanor Roosevelt Quote
“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.” ― Eleanor Roosevelt Quote
“I am convinced that every effort must be made in childhood to teach the young to use their own minds. For one thing is sure: If they don’t make up their minds, someone will do it for them.” ― Eleanor Roosevelt Quote
“Character building begins in our infancy and continues until death.” ― Eleanor Roosevelt Quote
“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.” ― Eleanor Roosevelt Quote
“We do not have to become heroes overnight. Just a step at a time, meeting each thing that comes up, seeing it as not as dreadful as it appears, discovering that we have the strength to stare it down.” ― Eleanor Roosevelt Quote
“There is not human being from whom we cannot learn something if we are interested enough to dig deep.” ― Eleanor Roosevelt Quote
“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 his own weight, this is a frightening prospect.” ― Eleanor Roosevelt Quote
“I think that somehow, we learn who we really are and then live with that decision.” ― Eleanor Roosevelt Quote
“One thing life has taught me: if you are interested, you never have to look for new interests. They come to you. When you are genuinely interested in one thing, it will always lead to something else.” ― Eleanor Roosevelt Quote
“Never allow a person to tell you no who doesn’t have the power to say yes.” ― Eleanor Roosevelt Quote
“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.” ― Eleanor Roosevelt Quote
“Do not stop thinking of life as an adventure. You have no security unless you can live bravely, excitingly, imaginatively; unless you can choose a challenge instead of competence.” ― Eleanor Roosevelt Quote
“To handle yourself, use your head; to handle others, use your heart.” ― Eleanor Roosevelt Quote
20 Short Eleanor Roosevelt Quotes
“No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.” ― Eleanor Roosevelt Quote
“You can often change your circumstances by changing your attitude” ― Eleanor Roosevelt Quote
“Happiness is not a goal…it’s a by-product of a life well lived.” ― Eleanor Roosevelt Quote
“What could we accomplish if we knew we could not fail?” ― Eleanor Roosevelt Quote
“Work is always an antidote to depression.” ― Eleanor Roosevelt Quote
“Light a candle instead of cursing the darkness.” ― Eleanor Roosevelt Quote
“Courage is exhilarating.” ― Eleanor Roosevelt Quote
“All of life is a constant education.”― Eleanor Roosevelt Quote
“I am who I am today because of the choices I made yesterday.”― Eleanor Roosevelt Quote
“There are no have-to’s, just choices” ― Eleanor Roosevelt Quote
“Be confident, not certain”― Eleanor Roosevelt Quote
“Never be bored, and you will never be boring.” ― Eleanor Roosevelt Quote
“The giving of love is an education in itself.” ― Eleanor Roosevelt Quote
“It takes as much energy to wish as it does to plan.”― Eleanor Roosevelt Quote
“When you cease to make a contribution, you begin to die.” ― Eleanor Roosevelt Quote
“It’s your life-but only if you make it so.” ― Eleanor Roosevelt Quote
“No one won the last war, and no one will win the next war.” ― Eleanor Roosevelt Quote
“Life is what you make it. Always has been, always will be.” ― Eleanor Roosevelt Quote
“With the new day comes new strength and new thoughts.” ― Eleanor Roosevelt Quote
“Do one thing every day that scares you.” ― Eleanor Roosevelt Quote