Eleanor Roosevelt

It’s your life-but only if you make it so.

Be confident, not certain

The only things one can admire at length are those one admires without knowing why.

Lest I keep my complacent way I must remember somewhere out there a person died for me today. As long as there must be war, I ask and I must answer was I worth dying for?

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.

Do not stop thinking of life as an adventure. You have no security unless you can live bravely, excitingly, imaginatively; unless you can choose a challenge instead of competence.

For death is no more than turning us over from time to eternity.

As for accomplishments, I just did what I had to do as things came along.

The sea, washing the equator and the poles, offers its perilous aid, and the power and empire that follow it… Beware of me, it says, but if you can hold me, I am the key to all the lands.

People who use time wisely spend it on activities that advance their overall purpose in life.

The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation. From the desperate city you go into the desperate country, and have to console yourself with the bravery of minks and muskrats. A stereotyped but unconscious despair is concealed even under what are called the games and amusements of mankind. There is no play in them, for this comes after work. But it is a characteristic of wisdom not to do desperate things.

It matters not how a man dies, but how he lives. The act of dying is not of importance, it lasts so short a time.

The secret of being a bore… is to tell everything.

I do not mind lying, but I hate inaccuracy.

Tis God gives skill, but not without men’s hand: He could not make Antonio Stradivarius’s violins without Antonio.

There’s much more stupidity than there is malice in the world.

I am reminded of the professor who, in his declining hours, was asked by his devoted pupils for his final counsel. He replied, ‘Verify your quotations.’

Do not tell me of my obligation to put all poor men in good situations. Are they my poor? I tell thee, thou foolish philanthropist, that I grudge the dollar, the dime, the cent, I give to such men as do not belong to me and to whom I do not belong.

Revolutions are always verbose.

As to the adjective, when in doubt strike it out.

The problems of victory are more agreeable than those of defeat, but they are no less difficult.