Eleanor Roosevelt

I believe that anyone can conquer fear by doing the things he fears to do

If anyone were to ask me what I want out of life I would say- the opportunity for doing something useful, for in no other way, I am convinced, can true happiness be attained.

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.

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.

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

Love can often be misguided and do as much harm as good, but respect can do only good. It assumes that the other person’s stature is as large as one’s own, his rights as reasonable, his needs as important.

I have lived some thirty-odd years on this planet, and I have yet to hear the first syllable of valuable or even earnest advice from my seniors.

To be a man’s own fool is bad enough, but the vain man is everybody’s.

When the righteous man truth away from his righteousness that he hath committed and doeth that which is neither quite lawful nor quite right, he will generally be found to have gained in amiability what he has lost in holiness.

In the stillness of the mind I saw myself as I am – unbound.

I’m like a starving man who has been given food. Maybe he’s cold, and his clothes are torn, and he’s ashamed, but he’s not unhappy.

Earth laughs in flowers.

Achievement brings its own anticlimax.

When any calamity has been suffered, the first thing to be remembered is how much has been escaped.

Few women, I fear, have had such reason as I have to think the long sad years of youth were worth living for the sake of middle age.

Condense some daily experience into a glowing symbol and an audience is electrified.

Courage is the greatest of all virtues, because if you haven’t courage, you may not have an opportunity to use any of the others.

If a madman were to come into this room with a stick in his hand, no doubt we should pity the state of his mind; but our primary consideration would be to take care of ourselves. We should knock him down first, and pity him afterwards.

Physically there is nothing to distinguish human society from the farm-yard except that children are more troublesome and costly than chickens and calves and that men and women are not so completely enslaved as farm stock.

I have been complimented many times and they always embarrass me; I always feel that they have not said enough.

Do not trouble yourself much to get new things, whether clothes or friends… Sell your clothes and keep your thoughts.