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Favourite quotes (21448)

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

Eleanor Roosevelt (1884–1962) American politician, diplomat, and activist, and First Lady of the United States

“Human resources are the most valuable assets the world has. They are all needed desperately.”

Eleanor Roosevelt (1884–1962) American politician, diplomat, and activist, and First Lady of the United States

Source: Tomorrow Is Now (1963), p. 71

“My husband plunged into work on a speech and I went off to work on an article. Midnight came and bed for all, and all that was said was "good night, sleep well, pleasant dreams, with the new day comes new strength and new thoughts.'”

Eleanor Roosevelt My Day

from "My Day" (January 8, 1936) Source: https://www2.gwu.edu/~erpapers/myday/displaydoc.cfm?_y=1936&_f=md054227 Eleanor Roosevelt, "My Day, January 8, 1936," The Eleanor Roosevelt Papers Digital Edition (2017), accessed 7/24/2018, https://www2.gwu.edu/~erpapers/myday/displaydoc.cfm?_y=1936&_f=md054227.

“No writing has any real value which is not the expression of genuine thought and feeling.”

Eleanor Roosevelt My Day

20 December 1939
My Day (1935–1962)

“Long ago, I made up my mind that when things were said involving only me, I would pay no attention to them, except when valid criticism was carried by which I could profit.”

Eleanor Roosevelt My Day

14 January 1942
My Day (1935–1962)

“What we must learn to do is to create unbreakable bonds between the sciences and the humanities. We cannot procrastinate. The world of the future is in our making. Tomorrow is now.”

Eleanor Roosevelt (1884–1962) American politician, diplomat, and activist, and First Lady of the United States

Source: Tomorrow Is Now (1963), p. 134

“To me who dreamed so much as a child, who made a dreamworld in which I was the heroine of an unending story, the lives of people around me continued to have a certain storybook quality. I learned something which has stood me in good stead many times — The most important thing in any relationship is not what you get but what you give.”

Eleanor Roosevelt (1884–1962) American politician, diplomat, and activist, and First Lady of the United States

Preface (December 1960) to The Autobiography of Eleanor Roosevelt (1961), p. xvi; the last line was originally used in the initial edition of her autobiography: This Is My Story (1937)

“I think I have a good deal of my Uncle Theodore in me, because I could not, at any age, be content to take my place by the fireside and simply look on.”

Eleanor Roosevelt (1884–1962) American politician, diplomat, and activist, and First Lady of the United States

As quoted in The Three Roosevelts: Patrician Leaders Who Transformed America (2002) by James MacGregor Burns ad Susan Dunn, p. 563
Variant: I could not at any age be content to take my place in a corner by the fireside and simply look on.

“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 My Day

23 February 1940
My Day (1935–1962)

“Example is the best lesson there is.”

Eleanor Roosevelt (1884–1962) American politician, diplomat, and activist, and First Lady of the United States

Tomorrow Is Now (1963)

“I have a great belief in spiritual force, but I think we have to realize that spiritual force alone has to have material force with it so long as we live in a material world. The two together make a strong combination.”

Eleanor Roosevelt My Day

17 May 1940
My Day (1935–1962)

“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 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 (1884–1962) American politician, diplomat, and activist, and First Lady of the United States

Source: You Learn by Living (1960), p. 63

“Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery, and today is a gift… that's why they call it the present.”

Eleanor Roosevelt (1884–1962) American politician, diplomat, and activist, and First Lady of the United States

The quote is usually regarded as anonymous, but is often attributed to her on several websites, as well as in several books, including My Life Is an Open Book http://books.google.es/books?id=qCOa1k--dt4C&printsec=frontcover&hl=es#v=onepage&q=eleanor%20roosevelt&f=false (2008), The Spirituality of Mary Magdalene http://books.google.es/books?hl=es&id=BLRuINwzVZcC&dq=eleanor+roosevelt++%22past+is+history%22&q=eleanor+roosevelt#v=snippet&q=eleanor%20roosevelt&f=false (2008), Mis cuatro estaciones http://books.google.es/books?hl=es&id=QCgANqKq8EIC&dq=ayer+es+historia%2C+ma%C3%B1ana++misterio.+Hoy+regalo+de+Dios+presente&q=%22eleanor+roosevelt%22#v=snippet&q=%22eleanor%20roosevelt%22&f=false (2008), and Gilles Lamontagne http://books.google.es/books?ei=MdG9UqGQK-fL2wX5zYC4Dw&hl=es&id=WyFKAQAAIAAJ&dq=Hier+est+de+l%27histoire%2C+demain+est+un+myst%C3%A8re+et+aujourd%27hui+est+un+cadeau.+C%27+est+pourquoi+nous+l%27appelons+%C2%AB+le+pr%C3%A9sent+roosevelt&focus=searchwithinvolume&q=eleanor+roosevelt (2010). None of these works cite any original reference. Disputed

“There never has been security. No man has ever known what he would meet around the next corner; if life were predictable it would cease to be life, and be without flavor.”

Eleanor Roosevelt (1884–1962) American politician, diplomat, and activist, and First Lady of the United States

Source: Tomorrow Is Now (1963), p. 80

“One of the best ways of enslaving a people is to keep them from education… The second way of enslaving a people is to suppress the sources of information, not only by burning books but by controlling all the other ways in which ideas are transmitted.”

Eleanor Roosevelt My Day

11 May 1943
My Day (1935–1962)

“Oh! I want to put my arms around you, I ache to hold you close. Your ring is a great comfort. I look at it and think she does love me or I wouldn't be wearing it!”

Eleanor Roosevelt (1884–1962) American politician, diplomat, and activist, and First Lady of the United States

In a letter to Lorena Hickok, March 7, 1933

“Great minds discuss ideas, average minds discuss events, small minds discuss people.”

Eleanor Roosevelt (1884–1962) American politician, diplomat, and activist, and First Lady of the United States

Some evidence for Henry Buckle (1821-1862) as the source: see p.33 quotation https://books.google.com/books?id=2moaAAAAYAAJ&q=buckle#v=snippet&q=buckle&f=false There are many published incidents of this as an anonymous proverb since at least 1948, and as a statement of Eleanor Roosevelt since at least 1992, but without any citation of an original source. It is also often attributed to Admiral Hyman G. Rickover but, though Rickover quoted this, he did not claim to be the author of it; in "The World of the Uneducated" in The Saturday Evening Post (28 November 1959), he prefaces it with "As the unknown sage puts it..." Great minds discuss ideas, average minds discuss events, and little minds discuss people. In this form it was quoted as an anonymous epigram in A Guide to Effective Public Speaking (1953) by Lawrence Henry Mouat New York times Saturday review of books and art, 1931: ...Wanted, the correct quotation and origin of this expression: Great minds discuss ideas, average minds discuss events, small minds discuss people... Several other variants or derivatives of the expression exist, but none provide a definite author: Great minds discuss ideas, mediocre minds discuss events, small minds discuss personalities. Great minds discuss ideas Average minds discuss events Small minds discuss people Small minds discuss things Average minds discuss people Great minds discuss ideas ...Be less curious about people and more curious about ideas. (Marie Curie, undated (died 1934), as quoted in Living Adventures in Science by Henry and Dana Lee Thomas, 1972) ...Some professor of psychology who has been eavesdropping for years makes the statement that "The best minds discuss ideas; the second in ranking talk about things; while the third group, or the least in mentality, gossip about people"… (Hardware age, Volume 123, 1929) ...He now reports that, "the best minds discuss ideas; the second ranking talks about things; while the third and lowest mentality – starved for ideas – gossips about people." (Printers' Ink, Volume 139, Issue 2, 1927, p. 87) ...It has been said long ago that there were three classes of people in the world, and while they are subject to variation, for elemental consideration they are useful. The first is that large class of people who talk about people; the next class are those who talk about things; and the third class are those who discuss ideas... (H. J. Derbyshire, "Origin of mental species", 1919) ...Mrs. Conklin points out certain bad conversational habits and suggests good ones, quoting Buckle's classic classification of talkers into three orders of intelligence — those who talk about nothing but persons, those who talk about things and those who discuss ideas... (review of Mary Greer Conklin's book Conversation: What to say and how to say it in The Continent, Jan. 23, 1913, p. 118) ...[ Henry Thomas Buckle's ] thoughts and conversations were always on a high level, and I recollect a saying of his which not only greatly impressed me at the time, but which I have ever since cherished as a test of the mental calibre of friends and acquaintances. Buckle said, in his dogmatic way: "Men and women range themselves into three classes or orders of intelligence; you can tell the lowest class by their habit of always talking about persons, the next by the fact that their habit is always to converse about things; the highest by their preference for the discussion of ideas"… (Charles Stewart, "Haud immemor. Reminescences of legal and social life in Edinburgh and London. 1850-1900", 1901, p. 33 http://www.mocavo.com/Haud-Immemor-by-Charles-Stewart-Reminiscences-of-Life-in-Edinburgh-and-London-1850-1900/608008/13?browse=true#63). Disputed

“One should always sleep in all of one's guest beds, to make sure that they are comfortable.”

Eleanor Roosevelt My Day

11 September 1941
My Day (1935–1962)

“A consciousness of the fact that war means practically total destruction is the reason, I think, for the rising tide to prevent what seems such a senseless procedure. I understand that it is perhaps difficult for some people, whose lives have been lived with a sense of the need for military development, to envisage the possibility of being no longer needed. But the average citizen is beginning to think more and more of the need to develop machinery to settle difficulties in the world without destruction or the use of atomic bombs.”

Eleanor Roosevelt My Day

20 December 1961
My Day (1935–1962)

“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 My Day

1 July 1940
My Day (1935–1962)