Eleanor Roosevelt

One thing life has taught me: if you are interested, you never have to look for new interests. They come to you. When you are genuinely interested in one thing, it will always lead to something else.

Life was meant to be lived, and curiosity must be kept alive. One must never, for whatever reason, turn his back on life.

You gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you stop to look fear in the face.

No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.

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

Each time you learn something new you must readjust the whole framework of your knowledge

We can aim to create a culture, where kids ask for healthy options instead of resisting them.

On the farm, I had chores. I had a calf. We had a herd of cattle in the pasture. We’d go and get me a calf at a cow auction with Amish people, which I would raise. I gave it a bottle every day, in this cute little coop, like a giant dog coop almost. I’ve always been a big animal person.

It is the bliss of childhood that we are being warped most when we know it the least.

I was a regular hand when I was 7. I picked cotton. I drove tractors. Children grew up not thinking that this is what they must do. We thought this was the thing to do to help your family.

Parents are the last people on earth who ought to have children.

I was brought up in a very ordinary family, in fact, a worker’s family. Both my father and mother were ordinary citizens.

Kids instinctively know – although they will argue to the contrary – that they really are not mature enough to make good decisions on some important issues.

I was born on a plantation, and things weren’t so good. We didn’t have any money. I never thought of the word ‘poor’ ’til I got to be a man, but when you live in a house that you can always peek out of and see what kind of day it is, you’re not doing so well. And your rest room is not inside the house.

Youth is a wonderful thing. What a crime to waste it on children.

Once you’re grown up you can’t come back.

Cotton was a force of nature. There’s a poetry to it, hoeing and growing cotton.

As a kid, I was making a building with blocks in our playroom. I didn’t have enough. So I asked my younger brother Robert if I could borrow some of his. He said, ‘Okay, but you have to give them back when you’re done.’ I used all of my blocks, then all of his blocks, and when I was done I had a great building, which I then glued together. Robert never did get those blocks back.

What we want is to see the child in pursuit of knowledge, and not knowledge in pursuit of the child.

They say that every child learns from their mother – it’s ingrained from babyhood.

I am convinced that every effort must be made in childhood to teach the young to use their own minds. For one thing is sure: If they don’t make up their minds, someone will do it for them.