Eleanor Roosevelt: Trending quotes

“Do one thing every day that scares you.”

Eleanor Roosevelt

Motivational , Success , Wise , For women

“You must do the thing you think you cannot do.”

Eleanor Roosevelt

Source: You Learn by Living (1960), p. 29–30
Context: 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.

Motivational , Inspirational , Deep , Courageous

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

Eleanor Roosevelt

Sad , Heartbreaking , Hurtful , Relationship

“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

Leadership

“Happinessis not a goal, it is a by-product. Paradoxically, the one sure way not to be happy is deliberately to map out a way of life in which one would please oneself completely and exclusively.”

Eleanor Roosevelt

Source: You Learn by Living (1960), p. 95

Way , Life , Happiness

“America is all about speed. Hot, nasty, bad-ass speed.”

Eleanor Roosevelt

Deliberately misattributed for comic effect in the opening of the film Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby (2006)
Misattributed

Bad luck , Speed

“A woman is like a tea bag; you never know how strong she is until she gets into hot water. ”

Eleanor Roosevelt

For women , Strong , Water , Tea

“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

As quoted in How to Stop Worrying and Start Living (1944; 1948) by Dale Carnegie; though Roosevelt has sometimes been credited with the originating the expression, "Damned if you do and damned if you don't" is set in quote marks, indicating she herself was quoting a common expression in saying this. Actually, this saying was coined back even earlier, 1836, by evangelist Lorenzo Dow in his sermons about ministers saying the Bible contradicts itself, telling his listeners, "… those who preach it up, to make the Bible clash and contradict itself, by preaching somewhat like this: 'You can and you can't-You shall and you shan't-You will and you won't-And you will be damned if you do-And you will be damned if you don't.' "

Motivational , Feeling , Heart

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

Eleanor Roosevelt

Deep , Success , Beauty , Wise

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

Eleanor Roosevelt

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

World

“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.

Dreams , Sleep , Night

“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)

Feeling

“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

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

World , Learning , Science , Future

“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

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)

People , Dreams , Learning , Time

“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

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.

Age , Thinking

“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)

Wise , Life

“Example is the best lesson there is.”

Eleanor Roosevelt

Tomorrow Is Now (1963)