Anna Eleanor Roosevelt (October 11, 1884 – November 7, 1962) was an American political figure, diplomat, and activist. Eleanor Roosevelt, the wife of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, shattered the mold of the First Lady. Not content with traditional duties, she actively traveled, spoke out on social issues, and redefined the role to be more involved and impactful. After her husband’s death, she continued to serve her country, becoming a delegate to the United Nations and playing a crucial role in crafting the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Earning the title “First Lady of the World” for her tireless advocacy, she left a lasting legacy on human rights and redefined what it meant to be a powerful woman in politics.
Born into privilege but marked by childhood loss, Eleanor Roosevelt found her own path. Educated in England, she married her distant cousin, Franklin, starting a family while Franklin pursued his political career. Their personal lives became complex when an affair surfaced, ultimately leading to an unspoken agreement for separate pursuits. This opened doors for Eleanor, who embraced social activism, joining labor unions and engaging in state politics, laying the groundwork for her future impact on the national and international stage. Beyond being First Lady, Eleanor Roosevelt was a political force in her own right. After overcoming personal challenges and navigating a complex marriage, she became her husband’s rock when illness threatened his career. She campaigned in his place, honed her public persona, and ultimately redefined the role of First Lady through activism and public engagement, leaving a lasting legacy on American politics and society.
Eleanor Roosevelt, though facing initial criticism for her outspokenness, transcended the First Lady’s role. She championed civil rights, women’s equality, and refugee aid. Beyond advocacy, she held press conferences, wrote columns, and even chaired the UN Commission on Human Rights, playing a key role in drafting the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. By the end, she wasn’t just a First Lady, but a globally respected human rights icon.In 1999, she was ranked ninth in the top ten of Gallup’s List of Most Widely Admired People of the 20th Century and was found to rank as the most admired woman in thirteen different years between 1948 and 1961 in Gallup’s annual most admired woman poll. Periodic surveys conducted by the Siena College Research Institute have consistently seen historians assess Roosevelt as the greatest American First Lady.
Eleanor Roosevelt Quotes
1. “Great minds discuss ideas. Average minds discuss events. Small minds discuss people.”
— Eleanor Roosevelt
2. “Do one thing every day that scares you.”
— Eleanor Roosevelt
3. “The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.”
— Eleanor Roosevelt
4. “No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.”
— Eleanor Roosevelt
5. “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
6. “Do what you feel in your heart to be right – for you’ll be criticized anyway.”
— Eleanor Roosevelt
7. “Many people will walk in and out of your life, but only true friends will leave footprints in your heart.”
— Eleanor Roosevelt
8. “Power corrupts. Knowledge is power. Study hard. Be evil.”
— Eleanor Roosevelt
9. “True hospitality consists of giving the best of yourself to your guests.”
— Eleanor Roosevelt
10. “Poor minds talk about people. Average minds talk about events. Great minds talk about ideas.”
— Eleanor Roosevelt
11. “You must do the things you think you cannot do.”
— Eleanor Roosevelt
12. “Happiness is not a goal; it is a by-product.”
— Eleanor Roosevelt
13. “Do one thing every day that scares you. Those small things that make us uncomfortable help us build the courage to do the work we do.”
— Eleanor Roosevelt
14. “You wouldn’t worry so much about what others think of you if you realized how seldom they do.”
— Eleanor Roosevelt
15. “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
16. “A woman is like a tea bag; you never know how strong it is until it’s in hot water.”
— Eleanor Roosevelt
17. “Today is the oldest you’ve ever been, and the youngest you’ll ever be again.”
— Eleanor Roosevelt
18. “With the new day comes new strength and new thoughts.”
— Eleanor Roosevelt
19. “Tomorrow is a mystery. Today is a gift. That is why it is called the present.”
— Eleanor Roosevelt
20. “To handle yourself, use your head; to handle others, use your heart.”
— Eleanor Roosevelt
21. “Absence makes the heart grow fonder.”
— Eleanor Roosevelt
22. “I am who I am today because of the choices I made yesterday.”
— Eleanor Roosevelt
23. “All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights…”
— Eleanor Roosevelt
24. “It takes as much energy to wish as it does to plan.”
— Eleanor Roosevelt
25. “Life is what you make it. Always has been, always will be.”
— Eleanor Roosevelt
26. “Human resources are the most valuable assets the world has. They are all needed desperately.”
— Eleanor Roosevelt
27. “You can often change your circumstances by changing your attitude.”
— Eleanor Roosevelt
28. “Anger is one letter short of danger.”
— Eleanor Roosevelt
29. “America is all about speed. Hot, nasty, bad-ass speed.”
— Eleanor Roosevelt
30. “You’ll be damned if you do, and damned if you don’t.”
— Eleanor Roosevelt
31. “Great leaders inspire people to have confidence in themselves.”
— Eleanor Roosevelt
32. “Be flexible, but stick to your principles.”
— Eleanor Roosevelt
33. “I can’t tell you how to succeed, but I can tell you how to fail: Try to please everybody.”
— Eleanor Roosevelt
34. “Some people are going to leave a mark on this world, while others will leave a stain.”
— Eleanor Roosevelt
35. “People grow through experience if they meet life honestly and courageously. This is how character is built.”
— Eleanor Roosevelt
36. “The destiny of human rights is in the hands of all our citizens in all our communities.”
— Eleanor Roosevelt
37. “The choices we make are ultimately our responsibility.”
— Eleanor Roosevelt
38. “Beautiful young people are accidents of nature, but beautiful old people are works of art.”
— Eleanor Roosevelt
39. “It is today that we create the world of the future.”
— Eleanor Roosevelt
40. “The future is literally in our hands to mold as we like. But we cannot wait until tomorrow. Tomorrow is now.”
— Eleanor Roosevelt
41. “It is not fair to ask of others what you are not willing to do yourself.”
— Eleanor Roosevelt
42. “Where, after all, do universal human rights begin? In small places, close to home.”
— Eleanor Roosevelt
43. “The greatest gift you can give a child is an imagination.”
— Eleanor Roosevelt
44. “A stumbling block to the pessimist is a stepping-stone to the optimist.”
— Eleanor Roosevelt
45. “All of life is a constant education.”
— Eleanor Roosevelt
46. “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
47. “No matter how plain a woman may be, if truth and honesty are written across her face, she will be beautiful.”
— Eleanor Roosevelt
48. “Surely, in the light of history, it is more intelligent to hope rather than to fear, to try rather than not to try. For one thing we know beyond all doubt: nothing has ever been achieved by the person who says: it can’t be done.”
— Eleanor Roosevelt
49. “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.”
— Eleanor Roosevelt
50. “The Marines I have seen around the world have the cleanest bodies, the filthiest minds, the highest morale, and the lowest morals of any group of animals I have ever seen. Thank God for the United States Marine Corps!”
— Eleanor Roosevelt
51. “All the water in the world cannot drown you unless it gets inside of you.”
— Eleanor Roosevelt
52. “If you lose money you lose much, If you lose friends you lose more, If you lose faith you lose all.”
— Eleanor Roosevelt
53. “Life is meant to be lived.”
— Eleanor Roosevelt
54. “Understanding is a two-way street.”
— Eleanor Roosevelt
55. “Life’s not about expecting, hoping, and wishing. It’s about doing, being, and becoming. It’s about learning from the mistakes of others. You can’t live long enough to make them all yourself.”
— Eleanor Roosevelt
56. “Never allow a person to tell you no who doesn’t have the power to say yes.”
— Eleanor Roosevelt
57. “If life were predictable it would cease to be life, and be without flavor.”
— Eleanor Roosevelt
58. “For our own success to be real, it must contribute to the success of others.”
— Eleanor Roosevelt
59. “Develop a skin as thick as a rhinoceros hide!”
— Eleanor Roosevelt
60. “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
61. “If someone betrays you once, it’s their fault; if they betray you twice, it’s your fault.”
— Eleanor Roosevelt
62. “Courage is more exhilarating than fear, and in the long run, it is easier.”
— Eleanor Roosevelt
63. “The giving of love is an education in itself.”
— Eleanor Roosevelt
64. “What could we accomplish if we knew we could not fail?”
— Eleanor Roosevelt
65. “Education is the cornerstone of liberty.”
— Eleanor Roosevelt
66. “Light a candle instead of cursing the darkness.”
— Eleanor Roosevelt
67. “Character building begins in our infancy and continues until death.”
— Eleanor Roosevelt
68. “When you have decided what you believe, what you feel must be done, have the courage to stand alone and be counted.”
— Eleanor Roosevelt
69. “Life is like a parachute jump, you’ve got to get it right the first time.”
— Eleanor Roosevelt
70. “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.”
— Eleanor Roosevelt
71. “Nobody else is going to do the things which are yours to be done in the world.”
— Eleanor Roosevelt
72. “Make the most of What you have, When you have it, Where you are.”
— Eleanor Roosevelt
73. “Justice cannot be for one side alone, but must be for both.”
— Eleanor Roosevelt
74. “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.”
— Eleanor Roosevelt
75. “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
76. “In business courtesy and efficiency have a symbiotic relationship.”
— Eleanor Roosevelt
77. “Pit race against race, religion against religion, prejudice against prejudice. Divide and conquer! We must not let that happen here.”
— Eleanor Roosevelt
78. “When will our consciences grow so tender that we will act to prevent human misery rather than avenge it?”
— Eleanor Roosevelt
79. “Happiness is not a goal, it is a by-product. Paradoxically, the one sure way not to be happy is deliberately to map out a way of life in which one would please oneself completely and exclusively.”
— Eleanor Roosevelt
80. “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.”
— Eleanor Roosevelt
81. “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
82. “Since everybody is an individual, nobody can be you. You are unique. No one can tell you how to use your time. It is yours. Your life is your own. You mold it. You make it.”
— Eleanor Roosevelt
83. “Poverty is an expensive luxury. We cannot afford it.”
— Eleanor Roosevelt
84. “Philosophy is not best expressed in words; it is expressed in the choices one makes.”
— Eleanor Roosevelt
85. “Each generation supposes that the world was simpler for the one before it.”
— Eleanor Roosevelt
86. “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.’”
— Eleanor Roosevelt
87. “The most important word in the English language is hope.”
— Eleanor Roosevelt
88. “We are afraid to care too much, for fear that the other person does not care at all.”
— Eleanor Roosevelt
89. “It’s your life-but only if you make it so.”
— Eleanor Roosevelt
90. “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.”
— Eleanor Roosevelt
91. “No leader can be too far ahead of his followers.”
— Eleanor Roosevelt
92. “Happiness is not a goal, it is a by-product. For what keeps our interest in life and makes us look forward to tomorrow is giving pleasure to other people.”
— Eleanor Roosevelt
93. “Everyone has the right to rest and leisure, including reasonable limitation of working hours and periodic holidays with pay.”
— Eleanor Roosevelt
94. “Life must be lived and curiosity kept alive. One must never, for whatever reason, turn his back on life.”
— Eleanor Roosevelt
95. “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
96. “If we do not pay for children in good schools, then we are going to pay for them in prisons and mental hospitals.”
— Eleanor Roosevelt
97. “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
98. “In our country we must trust the people to hear and see both the good and the bad and to choose the good.”
— Eleanor Roosevelt
99. “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
100. “An economic policy which does not consider the well-being of all will not serve the purposes of peace and the growth of well-being among the people of all nations.”
— Eleanor Roosevelt
101. “Staying aloof is not a solution, it is a cowardly evasion.”
— Eleanor Roosevelt
102. “It is a brave thing to have the 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
103. “I think that somehow, we learn who we really are and then live with that decision.”
— Eleanor Roosevelt
104. “Somehow we must be able to show people that democracy is not about words, but action.”
— Eleanor Roosevelt
105. “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.”
— Eleanor Roosevelt
106. “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
107. “Women are like tea bags: put them in hot water and they get stronger.”
— Eleanor Roosevelt
108. “Never mistake knowledge for wisdom. One helps you make a living; the other helps you make a life.”
— Eleanor Roosevelt
109. “Be confident, not certain.”
— Eleanor Roosevelt
110. “Everyone has the right to work, to free choice, to employment, to just and favorable conditions of work and to protection against unemployment.”
— Eleanor Roosevelt
111. “Nothing has ever been achieved by the person who says, ‘It can’t be done.’”
— Eleanor Roosevelt
112. “I never waste time looking back.”
— Eleanor Roosevelt
113. “Some friends leave footprints in your heart.”
— Eleanor Roosevelt
114. “I could not at any age be content to take my place in a corner by the fireside and simply look on.”
— Eleanor Roosevelt
115. “Do the things that interest you and do them with all your heart.”
— Eleanor Roosevelt
116. “It is not more vacation we need – it is more vocation.”
— Eleanor Roosevelt
117. “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
118. “Remember always that you not only have the right to be an individual, you have an obligation to be one.”
— Eleanor Roosevelt
119. “Enjoy every minute you have with those you love, my dear, for no one can take joy that is passed away from you. It will be there in your heart to live on when the dark days come.”
— Eleanor Roosevelt
120. “The basis of all good human behavior is kindness.”
— Eleanor Roosevelt
121. “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
122. “What one has to do usually can be done.”
— Eleanor Roosevelt
123. “Life has got to be lived – that’s all there is to it. At seventy, I would say the advantage is that you take life more calmly. You know that ‘this, too, shall pass!’”
— Eleanor Roosevelt
124. “Nothing we learn in this world is ever wasted.”
— Eleanor Roosevelt
125. “A guest is really good or bad because of the host or hostess who makes being a guest an easy or a difficult task.”
— Eleanor Roosevelt
126. “Life has got to be lived – that’s all there is to it.”
— Eleanor Roosevelt
127. “The battle for the individual rights of women is one of long standing and none of us should countenance anything which undermines it.”
— Eleanor Roosevelt
128. “When you cease to make a contribution, you begin to die.”
— Eleanor Roosevelt
129. “If quitting smoking seems hard right now, it is exactly what you should start doing.”
— Eleanor Roosevelt
130. “Losing money is a big loss, losing friends is greater than the loss, also lost all faith is lost.”
— Eleanor Roosevelt
131. “It takes courage to love, but pain through love is the purifying fire which those who love generously know.”
— Eleanor Roosevelt
132. “The basis of world peace is the teaching which runs through almost all the great religions of the world. Love thy neighbor as thyself.”
— Eleanor Roosevelt
133. “Never be bored, and you will never be boring.”
— Eleanor Roosevelt
134. “Before we can make friends with anyone else, we must first make friends with ourselves.”
— Eleanor Roosevelt
135. “To undo mistakes is always harder than not to create them originally, but we seldom have foresight. Therefore, we have no choice but to try to correct our past mistakes.”
— Eleanor Roosevelt
136. “You get strength and courage when you stop to look fear in the face.”
— Eleanor Roosevelt
137. “If you prepare yourself at every point as well as you can, with whatever means you may have, however meager they may seem, you will be able to grasp the opportunity for broader experience when it appears. Without preparation, you cannot do it.”
— Eleanor Roosevelt
138. “When it’s better for everyone, it’s better for everyone.”
— Eleanor Roosevelt
139. “I can not believe that war is the best solution. No one won the last war, and no one will win the next war.”
— Eleanor Roosevelt
140. “Government exists for one purpose: to make things better for all people.”
— Eleanor Roosevelt
141. “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.”
— Eleanor Roosevelt
142. “Have convictions. Be friendly. Stick to your beliefs as they stick to theirs. Work as hard as they do.”
— Eleanor Roosevelt
143. “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
144. “The important thing is neither your nationality nor the religion you professed, but how your faith translated itself in your life.”
— Eleanor Roosevelt
145. “More people are ruined by victory, I imagine, than be defeat.”
— Eleanor Roosevelt
146. “We will never have peace without friendship around the world.”
— Eleanor Roosevelt
147. “Choose a challenge instead of competence.”
— Eleanor Roosevelt
148. “What we must learn to do is to create unbreakable bonds between the sciences and the humanities. We cannot procrastinate. The world of the future is in our making. Tomorrow is now.”
— Eleanor Roosevelt
149. “No writing has any real value which is not the expression of genuine thought and feeling.”
— Eleanor Roosevelt
150. “It is curious how much more interest can be evoked by a mixture of gossip, romance, and mystery than by facts.”
— Eleanor Roosevelt
151. “Everybody wants something.”
— Eleanor Roosevelt
152. “Most of the work that’s done in the world gets done by people who weren’t feeling all that well at the time that they did it.”
— Eleanor Roosevelt
153. “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
154. “What you don’t do can be a destructive force.”
— Eleanor Roosevelt
155. “There is nothing to fear except fear itself.”
— Eleanor Roosevelt
156. “Manipulate the situation to create the reality of your desire.”
— Eleanor Roosevelt
157. “You do the things that need to be done according to priority.”
— Eleanor Roosevelt
158. “Terrific minds focus on tips; average minds go over activities; little minds talk about people today.”
— Eleanor Roosevelt
159. “The leisure class is one in which individuals have sufficient economic security and sufficient leisure to find opportunity for a variety of satisfactions in life.”
— Eleanor Roosevelt
160. “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
161. “The word liberal comes from the word free. We must cherish and honor the word free or it will cease to apply to us.”
— Eleanor Roosevelt
162. “Sailors have the cleanest bodies and the filthiest minds.”
— Eleanor Roosevelt
163. “What I have learned from my own experience is that the most important ingredients in a child’s education are curiosity, interest, imagination, and a sense of the adventure of life.”
— Eleanor Roosevelt
164. “Friendship with one’s self is all important because without it one cannot be friends with anyone else in the world.”
— Eleanor Roosevelt
165. “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
166. “Beautiful old people are works of art.”
— Eleanor Roosevelt
167. “We face the future fortified with the lessons we have learned from the past. It is today that we must create the world of the future.”
— Eleanor Roosevelt
168. “Change means the unknown.”
— Eleanor Roosevelt
169. “Anyone who has gone through great suffering is bound to have a greater sympathy and understanding of the problems of mankind.”
— Eleanor Roosevelt
170. “We must be willing to learn the lesson that cooperation may imply compromise, but if it brings a world advance it is a gain for each individual nation.”
— Eleanor Roosevelt
171. “The constant pressure to bring about conformity is a dangerous thing.”
— Eleanor Roosevelt
172. “Work is always an antidote to depression.”
— Eleanor Roosevelt
173. “No, I have never wanted to be a man. I have often wanted to be more effective as a woman, but I have never felt that trousers would do the trick!”
— Eleanor Roosevelt
174. “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.”
— Eleanor Roosevelt
175. “Nearly all great civilizations that perished did so because they had crystallized because they were incapable of adapting themselves to new conditions, new methods, new points of view. It is as though people would rather die than change.”
— Eleanor Roosevelt
