Eleanor Roosevelt quotes

What follows are just some of her more famous quotes.

“No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.”
― Eleanor Roosevelt, This is My Story

 “A woman is like a tea bag; you never know how strong it is until it's in hot water.”
― Eleanor Roosevelt, You Learn by Living: Eleven Keys for a More Fulfilling Life

 “Do one thing every day that scares you.”
― Eleanor Roosevelt

 “Do what you feel in your heart to be right – for you’ll be criticized anyway.”
― Eleanor Roosevelt

 “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, You Learn by Living: Eleven Keys for a More Fulfilling Life

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

 “The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.”
― Eleanor Roosevelt

“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

 “Many people will walk in and out of your life, but only true friends will leave footprints in your heart”
― Eleanor Roosevelt

 “We are afraid to care too much, for fear that the other person does not care at all.”
― Eleanor Roosevelt

 “Learn from the mistakes of others. You can’t live long enough to make them all yourself. ”
― Eleanor Roosevelt

 “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

 “You can often change your circumstances by changing your attitude”
― Eleanor Roosevelt

“No matter how plain a woman may be, if truth and honesty are written across her face, she will be beautiful.”
― Eleanor Roosevelt

“If someone betrays you once, it’s their fault; if they betray you twice, it’s your fault.”
― Eleanor Roosevelt

 “Beautiful young people are accidents of nature, but beautiful old people are works of art. ”
― Eleanor Roosevelt

 “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

 “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

“It is not fair to ask of others what you are not willing to do yourself.”
― Eleanor Roosevelt

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

 “Life is what you make it. Always has been, always will be.”
― Eleanor Roosevelt

 “With the new day comes new strength and new thoughts.”
― Eleanor Roosevelt

 “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

 “What could we accomplish if we knew we could not fail?”
― Eleanor Roosevelt

 “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, It Seems to Me: Selected Letters

 “Never allow a person to tell you no who doesn't have the power to say
yes.”
― Eleanor Roosevelt

 “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, The Autobiography of Eleanor Roosevelt

 “Great minds discuss ideas. Average minds discuss events. Small minds discuss people.”
― Eleanor Roosevelt

 “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

 “Friendship with oneself is all important, because without it one cannot be friends with anyone else in the world.”
― Eleanor Roosevelt

 “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

 “Never mistake knowledge for wisdom. One helps you make a living; the other helps you make a life. ”
― Eleanor Roosevelt

“Happiness is not a goal...it's a by-product of a life well lived.”
― Eleanor Roosevelt

 “Work is always an antidote to depression.”
― Eleanor Roosevelt

“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

 “No one won the last war, and no one will win the next war.”
― Eleanor Roosevelt, The Wisdom of Eleanor Roosevelt

 “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

 “I think that somehow, we learn who we really are and then live with that decision.”
― Eleanor Roosevelt

 “Confidence comes not from always being right but from not fearing to be wrong.”
― Eleanor Roosevelt

 “I believe that anyone can conquer fear by doing the things he fears to do ...”
― Eleanor Roosevelt

 “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

 “People grow through experience if they meet life honestly and courageously. This is how character is built.”
― Eleanor Roosevelt

 “When will our consciences grow so tender that we will act to prevent human misery rather than avenge it?”
― Eleanor Roosevelt

 “It's your life-but only if you make it so.”
― Eleanor Roosevelt, You Learn by Living: Eleven Keys for a More Fulfilling Life

 “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

“A stumbling block to the pessimist is a stepping-stone to the optimist.”
― Eleanor Roosevelt

“When you cease to make a contribution, you begin to die.”
― Eleanor Roosevelt

 “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

“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

 “Courage is exhilarating.”
― Eleanor Roosevelt

“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