The quotations of

Eleanor Roosevelt

American diplomat and activist, First Lady of the United States from 1933 to 1945

1884–1962

31 quotes, most often on Motivation & Goals, Love and Age.

Great minds discuss ideas. Average minds discuss events. Small minds discuss people.
- Ideas
No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.
A woman is like a tea bag. You never know how strong she is until she gets into hot water.
- Women
Absence makes the heart grow fonder.
- Love
Beautiful young people are accidents of nature, But beautiful old people are works of art.
- Age
- Beauty
The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.
- Motivation & Goals
I think, at a child’s birth, if a mother could ask a fairy godmother to endow it with the most useful gift, that gift should be curiosity.
From article “In Defense of Curiosity” appearing in The Saturday Evening Post 208 (August 24, 1935); 8-9, 64-66.
- Children
Do what you feel in your heart to be right- for you’ll be criticized anyway. You’ll be damned if you do, and damned if you don’t.
- Morality
Friendship with oneself is all-important because without it one cannot be friends with anyone else in the world.
- Friendship
Life must be lived and curiosity kept alive. One must never, for whatever reason, turn his back on life.
Preface (December 1960) to The Autobiography of Eleanor Roosevelt (1961), p. xix
- Life & Death
You gain strength, experience and confidence by every experience where you really stop to look fear in the face. You must do the thing you cannot do.
You Learn by Living (1960), p. 29–30
- Fear
Every time you meet a situation, though you think at the time it is an impossibility and you go through the tortures of the damned, once you have met it and lived through it, you find that forever after you are freer than you were before.
- Motivation & Goals
The giving of love is an education in itself.
- Education
- Love
You have to accept whatever comes and the only important thing is that you meet it with the best you have to give.
- Motivation & Goals
You must do the thing you think you cannot do.
You Learn by Living (1960), p. 29–30
- Motivation & Goals

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