Eleanor Roosevelt - Born Oct 11, 1884

Selected Eleanor Roosevelt Quotations

• You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You must do the thing which you think you cannot do.

• No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.

• Remember always that you not only have the right to be an individual, you have an obligation to be one.

• The word liberal comes from the word free. We must cherish and honor the word free or it will cease to apply to us.

• 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.

• It is not fair to ask of others what you are not willing to do yourself.

• What is to give light must endure the burning.

• 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.

• 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.

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

• When will our consciences grow so tender that we will act to prevent human misery rather than avenge it?

• Too often the great decisions are originated and given form in bodies made up wholly of men, or so completely dominated by them that whatever of special value women have to offer is shunted aside without expression.

• Campaign behavior for wives: Always be on time. Do as little talking as humanly possible. Lean back in the parade car so everybody can see the president.

• 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.

• Friendship with oneself is all important because without it one cannot be friends with anybody else in the world.

• You can't move so fast that you try to change the mores faster than people can accept it. That doesn't mean you do nothing, but it means that you do the things that need to be done according to priority.

• The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.

Eleanor had many feelings of inadequacy, some stemming from put-downs by her controlling mother-in-law, Sara Delano Roosevelt. She was not beautiful in the worldly sense, though the picture of her as a school girl (above) shows physical loveliness. But she was a kind, generous and intelligent woman with her own political influence, especially for social reform. Some of her feelings of doubt likely came from her husband's affair with Lucy Mercer. Her early years also contributed to her self-esteem issues.

Orphaned at ten, Anna Eleanor Roosevelt grew up without any real family identity or sense of acceptance. Her mother had been cold to her; her father, though more loving and closer to young Eleanor, often disappointed her. His behavior, including drinking heavily, led to his being banished from the family home well before his death.

In spite of all this, Eleanor achieved greatness and had influence in the world. She is one of my heroes, rising above the challenges and trials of life and putting others' needs ahead of her own.