Inspirational Quotes By Eleanor Roosevelt

Eleanor Roosevelt
1884 - 1962
American Human Rights Activist, Diplomat

About Eleanor Roosevelt
Anna Eleanor Roosevelt (October 11, 1884 – November 7, 1962) was First Lady of the United States from 1933 to 1945. She supported the New Deal policies of her husband, President Franklin D. Roosevelt, and assumed a role as an advocate for civil rights. After her husband's death in 1945, Roosevelt continued to be an internationally prominent author, speaker, politician, and activist for the New Deal coalition. She worked to enhance the status of working women, although she opposed the Equal Rights Amendment because she believed it would adversely affect women.

In the 1940s, Roosevelt was one of the co-founders of Freedom House and supported the formation of the United Nations. Roosevelt founded the UN Association of the United States in 1943 to advance support for the formation of the UN. She was a delegate to the UN General Assembly from 1945 and 1952, a job for which she was appointed by President Harry S. Truman and confirmed by the United States Senate. During her time at the United Nations she chaired the committee that drafted and approved the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. President Truman called her the "First Lady of the World" in tribute to her human rights achievements.

Active in politics for the rest of her life, Roosevelt chaired the John F. Kennedy administration's ground-breaking committee which helped start second-wave feminism, the Presidential Commission on the Status of Women. She was one of the most admired people of the 20th century, according to Gallup's List of Widely Admired People.



Enjoy these inspirational quotes filled with common sense from Eleanor Roosevelt

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

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

It is not fair to ask of others what you are unwilling to do yourself.
~Eleanor Roosevelt

For 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

Hate and force cannot be in just a part of the world without having an effect on the rest of it.
~Eleanor Roosevelt

I could not, at any age, be content to take my place by the fireside and simply look on. Life was meant to be lived. Curiousity must be kept alive. One must never, for whatever reason, turn his back on life.
~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

The only things one can admire at length are those one admires without knowing why.
~Eleanor Roosevelt

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

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

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

Women are like teabags. We don't know our true strength until we are in hot water!
~Eleanor Roosevelt

Friendship with oneself is all-important because without it one cannot be friends with anyone else in the world.
~Eleanor Roosevelt

A little simplification would be the first step toward rational living, I think.
~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 should be curiosity.
~Eleanor Roosevelt

When life is too easy for us, we must beware or we may not be ready to meet the blows which sooner or later come to everyone, rich or poor.
~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 lived through this horror. I can take the next thing that comes along".
~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

I could never say in the morning, "I have a headache and cannot do thus and so". Headache or no headache, thus and so had to be done.
~Eleanor Roosevelt

When you cease to make a contribution, you begin to die.
~Eleanor Roosevelt

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

No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.
~Eleanor Roosevelt

The giving of love is an education in itself.
~Eleanor Roosevelt

Understanding is a two-way street.
~Eleanor Roosevelt

With the new day comes new strength and new thoughts.
~Eleanor Roosevelt

Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people.
~Eleanor Roosevelt

Absence makes the heart grow fonder.
~Eleanor Roosevelt

You must do the things you think you cannot do.
~Eleanor Roosevelt

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

It is not more vacation we need - it is more vocation.
~Eleanor Roosevelt

Only a man's character is the real criterion of worth.
~Eleanor Roosevelt

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

Happiness is not a goal; it is a by-product.
~Eleanor Roosevelt

Life must be lived and curiosity kept alive. One must never, for whatever reason, turn his back on life.
~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