100 Inspiring Eleanor Roosevelt Quotes

Anna Eleanor Roosevelt dramatically changed the perception of the First Lady of the United States because of her political and diplomatic activism. While the White House used to have many conservative First Ladies, she actively sought to be a mouthpiece for those in need. In fact, she’s more remembered for her role as diplomat and politician than in her role as First Lady during President Roosevelt’s time in office. As such, she was a very outspoken First Lady and used the attention of the public to advance human rights. Thanks to her press conferences, books, and speeches, many outstanding statements of this truly inspiring woman are preserved for future generations. In the following, you can find a collection of inspiring Eleanor Roosevelt quotes to live by.

Even though many criticized Eleanor Roosevelt’s active stance for those suffering from discrimination, she is nowadays considered to be a critical forerunner for the civil rights movement.

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

How much Eleanor Roosevelt had evolved from her role as First Lady became apparent after Franklin D. Roosevelt’s death in 1944. Even though she did not intend to remain active in politics, Eleanor Roosevelt continued to hold many important political and diplomatic positions.

We hope the following Eleanor Roosevelt quotes will inspire you to overcome all the obstacles life confronts you with.

As such, Eleanor Roosevelt served as a delegate to the United States and became the chairwoman of its human rights commission. Let’s explore all the fantastic statements this inspiring woman has to offer.

100 Inspiring Eleanor Roosevelt Quotes

Thanks to Eleanor Roosevelt’s many books, you can develop an excellent understanding of what this woman stood for. As such, her inspiring statements offer great advice during times of difficulty but also encourage you to pursue your heart’s desire. Even more so, these inspiring Eleanor Roosevelt quotes help you to the courage and strength that is necessary to overcome that which is holding you back.

Here are these brilliant Eleanor Roosevelt quotes

1.

“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

2.

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

3.

“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

4.

“You must do the things you think you cannot do.”
Eleanor Roosevelt

5.

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

6.

“It is better to light a candle than curse the darkness.”
Eleanor Roosevelt

7.

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

8.

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

9.

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

10.

“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

11.

“Justice cannot be for one side alone, but must be for both.”
Eleanor Roosevelt

12.

“It takes courage to love, but pain through love is the purifying fire which those who love generously know.”
Eleanor Roosevelt

13.

“If life were predictable, it would cease to be life, and be without flavor.”
Eleanor Roosevelt

14.

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

15.

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

16.

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

17.

“The battle for the individual rights of women is one of long standing and none of us should countenance anything which undermines it.”
Eleanor Roosevelt

18.

“Perhaps nature is our best assurance of immortality.”
Eleanor Roosevelt

19.

“Sometimes I wonder if we shall ever grow up in our politics and say definite things which mean something, or whether we shall always go on using generalities to which everyone can subscribe, and which mean very little.”
Eleanor Roosevelt

20.

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

21.

“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

22.

“A woman is like a tea bag – you can’t tell how strong she is until you put her in hot water.”
Eleanor Roosevelt

23.

“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.”
Eleanor Roosevelt

24.

“Only a man’s character is the real criterion of worth.”
Eleanor Roosevelt

25.

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

26.

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

27.

“My experience has been that work is almost the best way to pull oneself out of the depths.”
Eleanor Roosevelt

28.

“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

29.

“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

30.

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

31.

“Have convictions. Be friendly. Stick to your beliefs as they stick to theirs. Work as hard as they do.”
Eleanor Roosevelt

32.

“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

33.

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

34.

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

35.

“I once had a rose named after me and I was very flattered. But I was not pleased to read the description in the catalog: no good in a bed, but fine up against a wall.”
Eleanor Roosevelt

36.

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

37.

“Do the things that interest you and do them with all your heart. Don’t be concerned about whether people are watching you or criticizing you.”
Eleanor Roosevelt

38.

“A little simplification would be the first step toward rational living, I think.”
Eleanor Roosevelt

39.

“What you don’t do can be a destructive force.”
Eleanor Roosevelt

40.

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

41.

“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

42.

“What one has to do usually can be done.”
Eleanor Roosevelt

43.

“I think I lived those years very impersonally. It was almost as though I had erected someone outside myself who was the president’s wife. I was lost somewhere deep down inside myself. That is the way I felt and worked until I left the White House.”
Eleanor Roosevelt

44.

“Probably the happiest period in life most frequently is in middle age, when the eager passions of youth are cooled, and the infirmities of age not yet begun; as we see that the shadows, which are at morning and evening so large, almost entirely disappear at midday.”
Eleanor Roosevelt

45.

“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.”
Eleanor Roosevelt

46.

“Courage is exhilarating.”
Eleanor Roosevelt

47.

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

48.

“I’m so glad I never feel important, it does complicate life!”
Eleanor Roosevelt

49.

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

50.

“In all our contacts it is probably the sense of being really needed and wanted which gives us the greatest satisfaction and creates the most lasting bond.”
Eleanor Roosevelt

51.

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

52.

“We do not have to become heroes overnight. Just a step at a time, meeting each thing that comes up, seeing it as not as dreadful as it appears, discovering that we have the strength to stare it down.”
Eleanor Roosevelt

53.

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

54.

“Probably the happiest period in life most frequently is in middle age, when the eager passions of youth are cooled, and the infirmities of age not yet begun; as we see that the shadows, which are at morning and evening so large, almost entirely disappear at midday.”
Eleanor Roosevelt

55.

“You can never really live anyone else’s life, not even your child’s. The influence you exert is through your own life, and what you’ve become yourself.”
Eleanor Roosevelt

56.

“Autobiographies are only useful as the lives you read about and analyze may suggest to you something that you may find useful in your own journey through life.”
Eleanor Roosevelt

57.

“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

58.

“Pit race against race, religion against religion, prejudice against prejudice. Divide and conquer! We must not let that happen here.”
Eleanor Roosevelt

59.

“I can not believe that war is the best solution. No one won the last war, and no one will win the next war.”
Eleanor Roosevelt

60.

“I do not think that I am a natural born mother… If I ever wanted to mother anyone, it was my father.”
Eleanor Roosevelt

61.

“Old age has deformities enough of its own. It should never add to them the deformity of vice.”
Eleanor Roosevelt

62.

“One’s philosophy is not best expressed in words; it is expressed in the choices one makes… and the choices we make are ultimately our responsibility.”
Eleanor Roosevelt

63.

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

64.

“As for accomplishments, I just did what I had to do as things came along.”
Eleanor Roosevelt

65.

“I have never felt that anything really mattered but knowing that you stood for the things in which you believed and had done the very best you could.”
Eleanor Roosevelt

66.

“You have to accept whatever comes and the only important thing is that you meet it with courage and with the best that you have to give.”
Eleanor Roosevelt

67.

“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

68.

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

69.

“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

70.

“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

71.

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

72.

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

73.

“Ambition is pitiless. Any merit that it cannot use it finds despicable.”
Eleanor Roosevelt

74.

“Since you get more joy out of giving joy to others, you should put a good deal of thought into the happiness that you are able to give.”
Eleanor Roosevelt

75.

“Today is the oldest you’ve ever been, and the youngest you’ll ever be again.”
Eleanor Roosevelt

76.

“I used to tell my husband that, if he could make me ‘understand’ something, it would be clear to all the other people in the country.”
Eleanor Roosevelt

77.

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

78.

“Understanding is a two-way street.”
Eleanor Roosevelt

79.

“Freedom makes a huge requirement of every human being. With freedom comes responsibility. For the person who is unwilling to grow up, the person who does not want to carry his own weight, this is a frightening prospect.”
Eleanor Roosevelt

80.

“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

81.

“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

82.

“I have spent many years of my life in opposition, and I rather like the role.”
Eleanor Roosevelt

83.

“Anyone who thinks must think of the next war as they would of suicide.”
Eleanor Roosevelt

84.

“The mother of a family should look upon her housekeeping and the planning of meals as a scientific occupation.”
Eleanor Roosevelt

85.

“I believe that anyone can conquer fear by doing the things he fears to do, provided he keeps doing them until he gets a record of successful experience behind him.”
Eleanor Roosevelt

86.

“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

87.

“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

88.

“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

89.

“Never be bored, and you will never be boring.”
Eleanor Roosevelt

90.

“I am who I am today because of the choices I made yesterday.”
Eleanor Roosevelt

91.

“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

92.

“Will people ever be wise enough to refuse to follow bad leaders or to take away the freedom of other people?”
Eleanor Roosevelt

93.

“If you can develop this ability to see what you look at, to understand its meaning, to readjust your knowledge to this new information, you can continue to learn and to grow as long as you live and you’ll have a wonderful time doing it.”
Eleanor Roosevelt

94.

“Be confident, not certain”
Eleanor Roosevelt

95.

“He who learns but does not think is lost. He who thinks but does not learn is in great danger.”
Eleanor Roosevelt

96.

“It takes as much energy to wish as it does to plan.”
Eleanor Roosevelt

97.

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

98.

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

99.

“It is not more vacation we need – it is more vocation.”
Eleanor Roosevelt

100.

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

I hope you enjoyed reading this collection of beautiful Eleanor Roosevelt quotes. What is your favorite quote from this list?

Stay victorious!