Top 528 Quotes & Sayings by Eleanor Roosevelt - Page 7

We have reached a point today where labor-saving devices are good only when they do not throw the worker out of his job.

I consider those are rich who are doing something they feel worthwhile and which they enjoy doing.

...real prosperity can only come when everybody prospers.

So I took an interest in politics, but I don't know whether I enjoyed it! It was a wife's duty to be interested in whatever interested her husband, whether it was politics, books, or a particular dish for dinner.

Be confident, not certain

There are no have-to's, just choices

There is not human being from whom we cannot learn something if we are interested enough to dig deep.

Absence makes the heart grow fonder

Curiosity must be kept alive.

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.

Our children should learn the general framework of their government and then they should know where they come in contact with the government, where it touches their daily lives and where their influence is exerted on the government. It must not be a distant thing, someone else's business, but they must see how every cog in the wheel of a democracy is important and bears its share of responsibility for the smooth running of the entire machine.

All wars eventually act as boomerangs and the victor suffers as much as the vanquished.

This living in a democracy is a problem, isn't it?

...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.

I never thought of achievement. I just did what came along for me to do - the thing that gave me the most pleasure.

We need our radicals.

When all is said and done, and statesmen discuss the future of the world, the fact remains that people fight these wars.

The labor movement has a great role to play in our country today.

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

It is our freedom to progress that makes us all want to live and to go on.

Everyone has the right to rest and leisure, including reasonable limitation of working hours and periodic holidays with pay.

One of the blessings of age is to learn not to part on a note of sharpness, to treasure the moments spent with those we love, and to make them whenever possible good to remember, for time is short.

Nothing was ever accomplished by anyone who said 'It can't be done.'

If man is to be liberated to enjoy more leisure, he must also be prepared to enjoy this leisure fully and creatively.

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.

Keep us at tasks too hard for us that we may be driven to Thee for strength.

Democracy cannot be static. Whatever is static is dead.

It is equality of monotony which makes the strength of the British Isles.

Everyone has the right to work, to free choice of employment, to just and favorable conditions of work and to protection against unemployment.

For instance, it is certain that women do not want a woman for President. Nor would they have the slightest confidence in her ability to fulfill the functions of that office.

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.

After the discovery in 1918 of love letters revealing that Franklin was involved with Lucy Mercer: The bottom dropped out of my own particular world, I faced myself, my surroundings, my world, honestly for the first time.

This is a strange, little, complacent country [Switzerland], in many ways a USA in miniature but of course nearer the center of disturbance!

Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance.

The will of the people shall be the basis of the authority of government.

Never be bored, and you will never be boring.

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

I have learned long ago to possess my soul in patience and accept the inevitable.

The hard part of loving is that one has to learn so often to let go of those we love, so they can do things, so they can grow, so they can return to us with an even richer, deeper love.

The family is the natural and fundamental group unit of society and is entitled to protection by society and the State.

Criticism ... makes very little dent upon me, unless I think there is some real justification and something should be done.

Long ago, I made up my mind that, when things were said involving only me, I would pay no attention to them, except when valid criticism was carried by which I could profit.

The most important word in the English language is hope.

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.

A trait no other nation seems to possess in quite the same degree as we do namely, a feeling of almost childish injury and resentment unless the world as a whole recognizes how innocent we are of anything but the most generous and harmless intentions

You should always own a black dress because no one ever remembers a black dress.

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.

I have always felt that it was important that everyone who was a worker join a labor organization.

At any age it does us no harm to look over our past shortcomings and plan to improve our characters and actions in the coming year.

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

Furnish an example, stop preaching, stop shielding, don't prevent self-reliance and initiative, allow your children to develop along thier own lines.

All big things in human history have been arrived at slowly and through many compromises.

I would not be happy unless I had some regular work to do every day and I imagine that I will always feel that way no matter how old I am.

The separation of church and state is extremely important to any of us who holds to the original traditions of our nation. . . . To change these traditions . . . would be harmful to our whole attitude of tolerance in the religious area. If we look at situations which have arisen in the past in Europe and other world areas, I think we will see the reason why it is wise to hold to our early traditions.

Friendship with oneself is all important.

You'll be "damned if you do, and damned if you don't."

I wonder if Communists occupied in producing plays are not safer than Communists starving to death. I have always felt that whatever your beliefs might be, if you could earn enough to keep body and soul together and had to be pretty busy doing that, you would not be very apt to have time to plot the overthrow of any existing government.

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.

...no matter how avid they themselves may be for praise and appreciation, people are often niggardly in giving it to others, however merited it is.

You [future first ladies] will feel that you are no longer clothing yourself, you are dressing a public monument.