Eleanor Roosevelt

When you cease to make a contribution, you begin to die.

Remember always that you have not only the right to be an individual; you have an obligation to be one. You cannot make any useful contribution in life unless you do this.

Pit race against race, religion against religion, prejudice against prejudice. Divide and conquer! We must not let that happen here.

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?

People grow through experience if they meet life honestly and courageously. This is how character is built.

What you don’t do can be a destructive force.

No man ever prayed heartily without learning something.

I refused to attend his funeral. But I wrote a very nice letter explaining that I approved of it.

Judged by every standard which history has applied to Governments, the Soviet Government of Russia is one of the worst tyrannies that has ever existed in the world. It accords no political rights. It rules by terror. It punishes political opinions. It suppresses free speech. It tolerates no newspapers but its own. It persecutes Christianity with a zeal and a cunning never equalled since the times of the Roman Emperors. It is engaged at this moment in trampling down the peoples of Georgia and executing their leaders by hundreds.

The sum of wisdom is that time is never lost that is devoted to work.

The less you open your heart to others, the more your heart suffers.

Look before you leap for as you sow, ye are like to reap.

Why is it that we rejoice at a birth and grieve at a funeral? It is because we are not the person involved.

If you and I are having a single thought of violence or hatred against anyone in the world at this moment, we are contributing to the wounding of the world.

We need only travel enough to give our intellects an airing.

Without friends the world is but a wilderness. There is no man that imparteth his joys to his friends, but he joyeth the more; and no man that imparteth his grieves to his friend, but he grieveth the less.

They are decided only to be undecided, resolved to be irresolute, adamant for drift, solid for fluidity, all-powerful to be impotent.

Our country is that spot to which our heart is bound.

Power does not corrupt men; fools, however, if they get into a position of power, corrupt power.

The safest course is to do nothing against one’s conscience. With this secret, we can enjoy life and have no fear from death.

Worth seeing? Yes; but not worth going to see.