Inspirational Quotations

Inspirational Quotes by Eleanor Roosevelt (American Humanitarian)

Anna Eleanor Roosevelt (1884–1962) was an American humanitarian and diplomat. She was the first lady from 1933 until 1945, longer than any other president’s wife. She was an active advocate for human and civil rights and an early icon of the women’s rights movement.

Born in New York City to a prosperous family, Eleanor was the niece of President Theodore Roosevelt. In 1905, she married Franklin D. Roosevelt, her fifth cousin (once removed.) After he developed poliomyelitis in 1921, Eleanor helped him deal with the ailment and became his confidante and adviser. She assumed many of his public duties when he served first as governor of New York and then as president.

As her husband’s “eyes and ears,” Eleanor oversaw government officials as well as American troops before and during World War II. She also campaigned for improved employment opportunities for women and minorities.

Eleanor served a U.S. representative to the General Assembly of the United Nations (1945–53, 1961–62.) As chairperson of the United Nations Commission on Human Rights, she helped draft the Declaration of Human Rights (1948.)

Roosevelt was a prolific writer; she wrote a syndicated and influential newspaper column for over twenty years. She also wrote It’s Up to the Women (1933,) This Troubled World (1938,) The Moral Basis of Democracy (1940,) and India and the Awakening East (1953.) She is also noted for her autobiographies This Is My Story (1937,) This I Remember (1949,) and On My Own (1958.)

More: Wikipedia READ: Works by Eleanor Roosevelt

Never allow a person to tell you ‘no’ who doesn’t have the power to say ‘yes.’
Eleanor Roosevelt
Topics: Confidence

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
Topics: Being Ourselves, Obligation

A woman is like a tea bag. You never know how strong she is until she gets into hot water.
Eleanor Roosevelt
Topics: Water

If we want a free and peaceful world, if we want to make the deserts bloom and man grow to greater dignity as a human being-we can do it.
Eleanor Roosevelt
Topics: Peace

Every time you meet a situation, though you think at the time it is 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 future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.
Eleanor Roosevelt
Topics: Future, Beauty, Believe, Tomorrow, Graduation, The Future, Dream, Belief, Attitude, General, Dreams

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
Topics: Mothers, Curiosity

Yesterday is history. Tomorrow is a mystery. Today is a gift. That’s why we call it ‘The Present’.
Eleanor Roosevelt

You must do the thing that you think you cannot do.
Eleanor Roosevelt

When you cease to make a contribution, you begin to die.
Eleanor Roosevelt
Topics: Service, Work, Living, Kindness, Giving

If life were predictable it would cease to be life, and be without flavor.
Eleanor Roosevelt
Topics: Nature, Living, Life

When you have decided what you believe, what you feel must be done, have the courage to stand alone and be counted.
Eleanor Roosevelt
Topics: Dedication, Commitment

If you have any interests you can gain a wider audience for those interests while the goldfish bowl is yours!
Eleanor Roosevelt
Topics: Audiences

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 gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look at 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 think you think you cannot do.”
Eleanor Roosevelt
Topics: Anxiety, Experience, Discovery, Fear, Live, Courage, Confidence, Think

With the new day comes new strength and new thoughts.
Eleanor Roosevelt
Topics: Strength

What basic objective I had, for many years, was to grasp every opportunity to live and experience life as deeply, as fully, and as widely as I possibly could.
Eleanor Roosevelt
Topics: Purpose

All human beings have failings, all human beings have needs and temptations and stresses. Men and women who live together through long years get to know one another’s failings; but they also come to know what is worthy of respect and admiration in those they live with and in themselves. If at the end one can say, This man used to the limit the powers that God granted him; he was worthy of love and respect and of the sacrifices of many people, made in order that he might achieve what he deemed to be his task, then that life has been lived well and there are no regrets.
Eleanor Roosevelt
Topics: Failure

It takes as much energy to wish as it does to plan.
Eleanor Roosevelt
Topics: Energy, Planning

I have spent many years of my life in opposition, and I rather like the role.
Eleanor Roosevelt
Topics: Dissent, Opposition

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
Topics: Criticism, Art, Individuality, Critics, Courage, Being True to Yourself

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

You must do the things you think you cannot do.
Eleanor Roosevelt
Topics: Achievement, One liners, Challenges, Think, Action

I could not, at any age, be content to take my place in a corner by the fireside and simply look on. Life was meant to be lived. Curiosity must be kept alive. The fatal thing is the rejection. One must never, for whatever reason, turn his back on life.
Eleanor Roosevelt
Topics: Life, Living Well, How to Live, Living, Life and Living, Curiosity

What one has to do usually can be done.
Eleanor Roosevelt
Topics: Necessity

Perhaps nature is our best assurance of immortality.
Eleanor Roosevelt
Topics: Immortality

He who loses money, loses much; He who loses a friend, loses much more; He who loses faith, loses all.
Eleanor Roosevelt
Topics: Hope

Somewhere along the line of development we discover what we really are and then we make our real decision for which we are responsible. Make that decision primarily for yourself because you can never really live anyone else’s lie, not even your child’s. The influence you exert is through your own life and what you become yourself.
Eleanor Roosevelt
Topics: Decision, Live, Life, Discover, Decisions

It isn’t enough to talk about peace, one must believe it. And it isn’t enough to to believe in it, one must work for it.
Eleanor Roosevelt
Topics: Peace, Belief

We must preserve our right to think and differ.
Eleanor Roosevelt
Topics: Thinking

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