Eleanor Roosevelt: Making
Eleanor Roosevelt was American politician, diplomat, and activist, and First Lady of the United States. Explore interesting quotes on making.“No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.”
Disputed
Variant: No one can make you feel inferior without your permission.
Source: Sometimes claimed to appear in her book This is My Story, but in The Quote Verifier by Ralph Keyes (2006), Keyes writes on p. 97 that "Bartlett's and other sources say her famous quotation can be found in This is My Story, Roosevelt's 1937 autobiography. It can't. Quotographer Rosalie Maggio scoured that book and many others by and about Roosevelt in search of this line, without success. In their own extensive searching, archivists at the Franklin D. Roosevelt Library in Hyde Park, New York, have not been able to find the quotation in This Is My Story or any other writing by the First Lady. A discussion of some of the earliest known attributions of this quote to Roosevelt, which may be a paraphrase from an interview, can be found in this entry from Quote Investigator http://quoteinvestigator.com/2011/03/30/not-inferior/.
Foreword (January 1960)
You Learn by Living (1960)
Context: One's philosophy is not best expressed in words; it is expressed in the choices one makes. In stopping to think through the meaning of what I have learned, there is much that I believe intensely, much I am unsure of. 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.
My Day (1935–1962)
Context: The film industry is a great industry with infinite possibilities for good and bad. Its primary purpose is to entertain people. On the side, it can do many other things. It can popularize certain ideals, it can make education palatable. But in the long run, the judge who decides whether what it does is good or bad is the man or woman who attends the movies. In a democratic country I do not think the public will tolerate a removal of its right to decide what it thinks of the ideas and performances of those who make the movie industry work. (29 October 1947)
Source: You Learn by Living (1960), p. 152
Context: "Anxiety," Kierkegaard said, "is the dizziness of freedom." This freedom of which men speak, for which they fight, seems to some people a perilous thing. It has to be earned at a bitter cost and then — it has to be lived with. For 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.
We must all face and unpalatable fact that we have, too often, a tendency to skim over; we proceed on the assumption that all men want freedom. This is not as true as we would like it to be. Many men and women who are far happier when they have relinquish their freedom, when someone else guides them, makes their decisions for them, takes the responsibility for them and their actions. They don't want to make up their minds. They don't want to stand on their own feet.
My Day (1935–1962)
Context: Little by little it dawned upon me that this law was not making people drink any less, but it was making hypocrites and law breakers of a great number of people. It seemed to me best to go back to the old situation in which, if a man or woman drank to excess, they were injuring themselves and their immediate family and friends and the act was a violation against their own sense of morality and no violation against the law of the land. (14 July 1939)
“It's your life-but only if you make it so.”
Source: You Learn by Living: Eleven Keys for a More Fulfilling Life
“One's philosophy is not best expressed in words; it is expressed in the choices one makes.”
Foreword (January 1960)
You Learn by Living (1960)
Context: One's philosophy is not best expressed in words; it is expressed in the choices one makes. In stopping to think through the meaning of what I have learned, there is much that I believe intensely, much I am unsure of. 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.
Source: You Learn by Living: Eleven Keys for a More Fulfilling Life
“When you cease to make a contribution, you begin to die.”
As quoted in Eleanor : The Years Alone (1972) by Joseph P. Lash
Source: You Learn by Living: Eleven Keys for a More Fulfilling Life
“Learn from the mistakes of others. You can't live long enough to make them all yourself”
Cited as a piece of anonymous folk-wisdom from the 1940s onwards https://books.google.com/books?id=iNkWAQAAMAAJ&dq=%22Learn+from+the+mistakes+of+others.+You+can%27t+live+long+enough+to+make+them+all+yourself%22&focus=searchwithinvolume&q=%22make+them+all+yourself%22. Not attributed to Eleanor Roosevelt until 2001 https://books.google.com/books?id=ctxi36FCi18C&pg=PA151&dq=%22Learn+from+the+mistakes+of+others%22+%22live+long%22+roosevelt&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiI_sD5mqDLAhWIKGMKHb8HAZ0Q6AEIHTAA#v=onepage&q=%22Learn%20from%20the%20mistakes%20of%20others%22%20%22live%20long%22%20roosevelt&f=false.
Disputed
“One should always sleep in all of one's guest beds, to make sure that they are comfortable.”
11 September 1941
My Day (1935–1962)
17 May 1940
My Day (1935–1962)