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Eleanor Roosevelt

Eleanor Roosevelt Quotes

Former First Lady of the United States

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Famous Eleanor Roosevelt Quotes

“I think we ought to impress on both our girls and boys that successful marriages require just as much work, just as much intelligence and just as much unselfish devotion, as they give to any position they undertake to fill on a paid basis.”

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Book:My Day: The Best of Eleanor Roosevelt's Acclaimed Newspaper Columns, 1936-1962
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“One's philosophy is not best expressed in words; it is expressed in the choices one makes. In stopping to think through the meaning of what I have learned, there is much that I believe intensely, much I am unsure of. 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.”

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Author:Eleanor Roosevelt
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“All of us in this country give lip service to the ideals set forth in the Bill of Rights and emphasized by every additional amendment, and yet when war is stirring in the world, many of us are ready to curtail our civil liberties. We do not stop to think that curtailing these liberties may in the end bring us a greater danger than the danger we are trying to avert.”

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Author:Eleanor Roosevelt
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“We can no longer oversimplify. We can no longer build lazy and false stereotypes: Americans are like this, Russians are like that, a Jew behaves in such a way, a Negro thinks in a different way. The lazy generalities - 'You know how women are ... Isn't that just like a man?' The world cannot be understood from a single point of view.”

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Book:What I Hope to Leave Behind: The Essential Essays of Eleanor Roosevelt
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“I have a great belief in spiritual force, but I think we have to realize that spiritual force alone has to have material force with it so long as we live in a material world. The two together make a strong combination.”

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Book:My Day: The Best of Eleanor Roosevelt's Acclaimed Newspaper Columns, 1936-1962
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“A woman has, first of all, her duties in their own home, and there are many women particularly when they're young, who can do an active job in their community like being a mayor, but who cannot go to Washington or Albany or wherever the capital of the state is. There are others who can, can leave home, whose children are older and so forth. I think it all is a personal decision.”

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Author:Eleanor Roosevelt
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“Mahatma Gandhi I would say had perhaps a greater spiritual quality whereas Winston Churchill had besides the courage, ability and above everything else, the ability to put into words what his people felt so that he could always lead them. And my own husband I think had great patience, which you need in a democracy because you have to come to do fundamental things, you have to have the patience to have people educated; and then I think he had a deep interest in human beings as human beings.”

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Author:Eleanor Roosevelt
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“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.”

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Author:Eleanor Roosevelt
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“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.”

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Book:What I Hope to Leave Behind: The Essential Essays of Eleanor Roosevelt
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“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.”

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Book:Courage in a Dangerous World: The Political Writings of Eleanor Roosevelt
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“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.”

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Book:You learn by living
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“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.”

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Book:You learn by living
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“The encouraging thing is that every time you meet a situation, though you may 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 ever were before. . . . 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.”

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Author:Eleanor Roosevelt
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“What counts, in the long run, is not what you read; it is what you sift through your own mind; it is the ideas and impressions that are aroused in you by your reading. It is the ideas stirred in your own mind, the ideas which are a reflection of your own thinking, which make you an interesting person”

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Book:You Learn By Living: Eleven Keys for a More Fulfilling Life
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“If many of our young people have lost the excitement of the early settlers, who had a country to explore and develop, it is because no one remembers to tell them that the world has never been so challenging, so exciting... Perhaps the older generation is often to blame with its cautious warning: “Take a job that will give you security, not adventure.” But I say to the young: “Do not stop thinking of life as an adventure. You have no security unless you can live bravely, excitingly, and imaginatively; unless you can choose a challenge instead of a competence.”

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Author:Eleanor Roosevelt
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“To handle yourself, use your head; to handle others, use your heart.”

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Author:Eleanor Roosevelt
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“You wouldn't worry so much about what others think of you if you realized how seldom they do.”

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Author:Eleanor Roosevelt
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“Smearing good people like Lauchlin Currie [former administrative assistant to President Roosevelt], Alger Hiss and others is, I think, unforgiveable... Anyone knowing Mr. Currie or Mr. Hiss, who are the two people whom I happen to know fairly well, would not need any denial on their part to know they are not Communists. Their records prove it.”

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Author:Eleanor Roosevelt
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“You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face.... The danger lies in refusing to face the fear, in not daring to come to grips with it. If you fail anywhere along the line it will take away your confidence. You must make yourself succeed every time. You must do the thing you think you cannot do.”

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Book:You learn by living
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