Eleanor Roosevelt

When you adopt the standards and the values of someone else… you surrender your own integrity. You become, to the extent of your surrender, less of a human being.

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.

You must do the thing you think you cannot do.

Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people.

Only a man’s character is the real criterion of worth.

To be a citizen in a democracy, a human being must be given a healthy start.

Disease generally begins that equality which death completes.

The mob is man voluntarily descending to the nature of the beast. Its fit hour of activity is night. Its actions are insane like its whole constitution. It persecutes a principle; it would whip a right; it would tar and feather justice, by inflicting fire and outrage upon the houses and persons of those who have these. It resembles the prank of boys, who run with fire-engines to put out the ruddy aurora streaming to the stars.

Let the beauty of what you love be what you do.

What is once well done is done forever.

If man is to be liberated to enjoy more leisure, he must also be prepared to enjoy this leisure fully and creatively.

That virtue we appreciate is as much ours as another s. We see so much only as we possess.

The holy passion of friendship is of so sweet and steady and loyal and enduring a nature that it will last through a whole lifetime, if not asked to lend money.

Avarice is generally the last passion of those lives of which the first part has been squandered in pleasure, and the second devoted to ambition. He that sinks under the fatigue of getting wealth, lulls his age with the milder business of saving it.

Nothing is so exhilarating in life as to be shot at with no result.

He that complies against his will is of his own opinion still.

Of all noises, I think music is the least disagreeable.

We must make the world honest before we can honestly say to our children that honesty is the best policy.

When you discover your mission, you will feel its demand. It will fill you with enthusiasm and a burning desire to get to work on it.

What we learn only through the ears makes less impression upon our minds than what is presented to the trustworthy eye.

I said there was nothing so convincing to an Indian as a general massacre. If he could not approve of the massacre, I said the next surest thing for an Indian was soap and education. Soap and education are not as sudden as a massacre, but they are more deadly in the long run; because a half-massacred Indian may recover, but if you educate him and wash him, it is bound to finish him some time or other.