128 Eleanor Roosevelt Quotes: Best Lines on Courage, Wisdom & Peace

From courage in the face of fear to the quiet work of character, these 128 eleanor roosevelt quotes remain strikingly relevant — for leaders, for citizens, and for anyone learning to live bravely. Learn more about her life and legacy at Wikipedia’s Eleanor Roosevelt biography.

Eleanor Roosevelt Quotes on Courage and Facing Fear

1. You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face.
   — Eleanor Roosevelt
2. You must do the thing you think you cannot do.
   — Eleanor Roosevelt
3. The encouraging thing is that every time you meet a situation, though you may 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 ever were before.
   — Eleanor Roosevelt
4. Fear has always seemed to me to be the worst stumbling block which anyone has to face. It is the great crippler.
   — Eleanor Roosevelt
5. Courage is more exhilarating than fear and in the long run it is easier. We do not have to become heroes overnight. Just a step at a time, meeting each thing that comes up, seeing it is not as dreadful as it appeared, discovering we have the strength to stare it down.
   — Eleanor Roosevelt
6. You are able to say to yourself, ‘I lived through this horror. I can take the next thing that comes along.’
   — Eleanor Roosevelt
7. The danger lies in refusing to face the fear, in not daring to come to grips with it.
   — Eleanor Roosevelt
8. No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.
   — Eleanor Roosevelt
9. Do not stop thinking of life as an adventure. You have no security unless you can live bravely, excitingly, imaginatively.
   — Eleanor Roosevelt
10. Perseverance is failing 19 times and succeeding the 20th.
    — Eleanor Roosevelt
11. If you fail anywhere along the line it will take away your confidence. You must make yourself succeed every time.
    — Eleanor Roosevelt
12. You must do the things you think you cannot do.
    — Attributed to Eleanor Roosevelt

Eleanor Roosevelt Quotes on Life, Purpose and Wisdom

1. The purpose of life is to live it, to taste experience to the utmost, to reach out eagerly and without fear for newer and richer experience.
   — Eleanor Roosevelt
2. Life was meant to be lived, and curiosity must be kept alive. One must never, for whatever reason, turn his back on life.
   — Eleanor Roosevelt
3. I could not, at any age, be content to take my place by the fireside and simply look on. Life was meant to be lived.
   — Eleanor Roosevelt
4. If life were predictable it would cease to be life, and be without flavor.
   — Eleanor Roosevelt
5. In the long run, we shape our lives, and we shape ourselves.
   — Eleanor Roosevelt
6. What you don’t do can be a destructive force.
   — Eleanor Roosevelt
7. When you cease to make a contribution, you begin to die.
   — Eleanor Roosevelt
8. To leave the world richer — that is the ultimate success.
   — Eleanor Roosevelt
9. Each of us has all the time there is. Those years, weeks, hours, are the sands in the glass running swiftly away. To let them drift through our fingers is tragic waste. To use them to the hilt, making them count for something, is the beginning of wisdom.
   — Eleanor Roosevelt
10. It’s your life — but only if you make it so.
    — Eleanor Roosevelt
11. Do the things that interest you and do them with all your heart.
    — Eleanor Roosevelt
12. You have to accept whatever comes, and the only important thing is that you meet it with the best you have to give.
    — Eleanor Roosevelt
13. One thing life has taught me: if you are interested, you never have to look for new interests. They come to you.
    — Eleanor Roosevelt
14. There is no human being from whom we cannot learn something if we are interested enough to dig deep.
    — Eleanor Roosevelt
15. What counts, in the long run, is not what you read; it is what you sift through your own mind.
    — Eleanor Roosevelt
16. If you can develop this ability to see what you look at, to understand its meaning, to readjust your knowledge to this new information, you can continue to learn and to grow as long as you live.
    — Eleanor Roosevelt
17. I think that somehow, we learn who we really are and then live with that decision.
    — Eleanor Roosevelt
18. As for accomplishments, I just did what I had to do as things came along.
    — Eleanor Roosevelt
19. I have never felt that anything really mattered but knowing that you stood for the things in which you believed and had done the very best you could.
    — Eleanor Roosevelt
20. If anyone were to ask me what I want out of life I would say — the opportunity for doing something useful.
    — Eleanor Roosevelt
21. If man is to be liberated to enjoy more leisure, he must also be prepared to enjoy this leisure fully and creatively.
    — Eleanor Roosevelt
22. If the use of leisure time is confined to looking at TV for a few extra hours every day, we will deteriorate as a people.
    — Eleanor Roosevelt
23. When life is too easy for us, we must beware or we may not be ready to meet the blows which sooner or later come to everyone, rich or poor.
    — Eleanor Roosevelt
24. I am who I am today because of the choices I made yesterday.
    — Attributed to Eleanor Roosevelt
25. The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.
    — Attributed to Eleanor Roosevelt
26. A day out-of-doors, someone I loved to talk with, a good book and some simple food and music — that would be rest.
    — Eleanor Roosevelt

Eleanor Roosevelt Quotes on Love, Happiness and Relationships

1. Happiness is not a goal; it is a by-product.
   — Eleanor Roosevelt
2. Since you get more joy out of giving joy to others, you should put a good deal of thought into the happiness that you are able to give.
   — Eleanor Roosevelt
3. Do whatever comes your way to do as well as you can. Think as little as possible about yourself. Think as much as possible about other people.
   — Eleanor Roosevelt
4. The most unhappy people in the world are those who face the days without knowing what to do with their time.
   — Eleanor Roosevelt
5. The giving of love is an education in itself.
   — Eleanor Roosevelt
6. It takes courage to love, but pain through love is the purifying fire which those who love generously know.
   — Eleanor Roosevelt
7. We are afraid to care too much, for fear that the other person does not care at all.
   — Eleanor Roosevelt
8. Friendship with oneself is all-important, because without it one cannot be friends with anyone else in the world.
   — Eleanor Roosevelt
9. The most important thing in any relationship is not what you get but what you give.
   — Eleanor Roosevelt
10. Up to a certain point it is good for us to know that there are people in the world who will give us love and unquestioned loyalty to the limit of their ability.
    — Eleanor Roosevelt
11. You can never really live anyone else’s life, not even your child’s. The influence you exert is through your own life, and what you’ve become yourself.
    — Eleanor Roosevelt
12. Enjoy every minute you have with those you love, my dear, for no one can take joy that is past away from you.
    — Eleanor Roosevelt
13. There are three fundamentals for human happiness — love and faith, and work which will produce at least a minimum of material security.
    — Eleanor Roosevelt
14. It seems to me of great importance to teach children respect for life.
    — Eleanor Roosevelt
15. 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.
    — Eleanor Roosevelt
16. A woman is like a tea bag — you can’t tell how strong she is until you put her in hot water.
    — Attributed to Eleanor Roosevelt

Eleanor Roosevelt Quotes on Leadership, Character and Service

1. Remember always that you not only have the right to be an individual, you have an obligation to be one.
   — Eleanor Roosevelt
2. One’s philosophy is not best expressed in words; it is expressed in the choices one makes.
   — Eleanor Roosevelt
3. Do what you feel in your heart to be right — for you’ll be criticized anyway.
   — Eleanor Roosevelt
4. It is not fair to ask of others what you are not willing to do yourself.
   — Eleanor Roosevelt
5. What one has to do usually can be done.
   — Eleanor Roosevelt
6. To handle yourself, use your head; to handle others, use your heart.
   — Eleanor Roosevelt
7. Great leaders inspire people to have confidence in themselves.
   — Eleanor Roosevelt
8. Usefulness, whatever form it may take, is the price we should pay for the air we breathe.
   — Eleanor Roosevelt
9. I would not be happy unless I had some regular work to do every day.
   — Eleanor Roosevelt
10. Work is always an antidote to depression.
    — Eleanor Roosevelt
11. It takes as much energy to wish as it does to plan.
    — Eleanor Roosevelt
12. It is not more vacation we need — it is more vocation.
    — Eleanor Roosevelt
13. With the new day comes new strength and new thoughts.
    — Eleanor Roosevelt
14. Criticism makes very little dent upon me, unless I think there is some real justification and something should be done.
    — Eleanor Roosevelt
15. Long ago, I made up my mind that, when things were said involving only me, I would pay no attention to them, except when valid criticism was carried by which I could profit.
    — Eleanor Roosevelt
16. At any age it does us no harm to look over our past shortcomings and plan to improve our characters and actions in the coming year.
    — Eleanor Roosevelt
17. One of the blessings of age is to learn not to part on a note of sharpness, to treasure the moments spent with those we love.
    — Eleanor Roosevelt
18. To be mature you have to realize what you value most.
    — Eleanor Roosevelt
19. Understanding is a two-way street.
    — Eleanor Roosevelt
20. We must be able to disagree with people and not be disagreeable.
    — Eleanor Roosevelt
21. I used to tell my husband that, if he could make me ‘understand’ something, it would be clear to all the other people in the country.
    — Eleanor Roosevelt
22. The important thing is neither your nationality nor the religion you professed, but how your faith translated itself in your life.
    — Eleanor Roosevelt
23. No matter how plain a woman may be, if truth and honesty are written across her face, she will be beautiful.
    — Eleanor Roosevelt
24. I have spent many years of my life in opposition, and I rather like the role.
    — Eleanor Roosevelt
25. I’m so glad I never feel important, it does complicate life!
    — Eleanor Roosevelt
26. I once had a rose named after me and I was very flattered. But I was not pleased to read the description in the catalogue: ‘No good in a bed, but fine up against a wall.’
    — Eleanor Roosevelt
27. The only advantage of not being too good a housekeeper is that your guests are so pleased to feel how very much better they are.
    — Eleanor Roosevelt
28. If you have any interests you can gain a wider audience for those interests while the goldfish bowl is yours!
    — Eleanor Roosevelt
29. It is so much easier to be enthusiastic than to reason!
    — Eleanor Roosevelt
30. A good leader inspires people to have confidence in the leader, a great leader inspires people to have confidence in themselves.
    — Attributed to Eleanor Roosevelt
31. Never mistake knowledge for wisdom. One helps you make a living; the other helps you make a life.
    — Attributed to Eleanor Roosevelt
32. Never allow a person to tell you no who doesn’t have the power to say yes.
    — Attributed to Eleanor Roosevelt
33. Learn from the mistakes of others. You can’t live long enough to make them all yourself.
    — Attributed to Eleanor Roosevelt
34. You can often change your circumstances by changing your attitude.
    — Attributed to Eleanor Roosevelt
35. Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people.
    — Attributed to Eleanor Roosevelt
36. Beautiful young people are accidents of nature, but beautiful old people are works of art.
    — Attributed to Eleanor Roosevelt
37. If someone betrays you once, it’s their fault; if they betray you twice, it’s your fault.
    — Attributed to Eleanor Roosevelt
38. Nothing has ever been achieved by the person who says, ‘It can’t be done.’
    — Attributed to Eleanor Roosevelt
39. You wouldn’t worry so much about what others think of you if you realized how seldom they do.
    — Attributed to Eleanor Roosevelt
40. The Marines I have seen around the world have the cleanest bodies, the filthiest minds, the highest morale, and the lowest morals of any group of animals I have ever seen. Thank God for the United States Marine Corps!
    — Attributed to Eleanor Roosevelt

Eleanor Roosevelt Quotes on Democracy, Human Rights and Peace

1. Where, after all, do universal human rights begin? In small places, close to home.
   — Eleanor Roosevelt
2. Justice cannot be for one side alone, but must be for both.
   — Eleanor Roosevelt
3. We have to face the fact that either all of us are going to die together or we are going to learn to live together, and if we are to live together we have to talk.
   — Eleanor Roosevelt
4. The world of the future is in our making. Tomorrow is now.
   — Eleanor Roosevelt
5. It is today that we must create the world of the future.
   — Eleanor Roosevelt
6. It isn’t enough to talk about peace. One must believe in it. And it isn’t enough to believe in it. One must work at it.
   — Eleanor Roosevelt
7. When will our consciences grow so tender that we will act to prevent human misery rather than avenge it?
   — Eleanor Roosevelt
8. Pit race against race, religion against religion, prejudice against prejudice. Divide and conquer! We must not let that happen here.
   — Eleanor Roosevelt
9. There was a time when a woman married and her property became her husband’s, her earnings were her husband’s and the control of the children was never in her hands. The battle for the individual rights of women is one of long standing and none of us should countenance anything which undermines it.
   — Eleanor Roosevelt
10. It is the person and not the sex which counts.
    — Eleanor Roosevelt
11. True patriotism springs from a belief in the dignity of the individual, freedom and equality not only for Americans but for all people on earth, universal brotherhood and good will.
    — Eleanor Roosevelt
12. The UN is our greatest hope for future peace. Alone we cannot keep the peace of the world, but in cooperation with others we have to achieve this much longed-for security.
    — Eleanor Roosevelt
13. I feel that unless we learn to live together as individuals and as groups, and to find ways of settling our difficulties without showing fear of each other and resorting to force, we cannot hope to see our democracy successful.
    — Eleanor Roosevelt
14. I believe that democracy is based on the ability to make democracy serve the good of the majority of the people. If it can’t do that, then it should not survive.
    — Eleanor Roosevelt
15. I hope the women of the United States will awaken to the full sense of the influence which they can wield if they accept the responsibility which all power implies.
    — Eleanor Roosevelt
16. The time now calls for mankind as a whole to rise to great heights. We must have faith or we die.
    — Eleanor Roosevelt
17. Will people ever be wise enough to refuse to follow bad leaders or to take away the freedom of other people?
    — Eleanor Roosevelt
18. A respect for the rights of other people to determine their forms of government will not weaken our democracy.
    — Eleanor Roosevelt
19. Without equality there can be no democracy.
    — Eleanor Roosevelt
20. What we apparently have failed to grasp is that, in this new world in which we live, the collective hunger of great masses of people will affect our long-range welfare.
    — Eleanor Roosevelt
21. Our obligation to the world is, primarily, our obligation to our own future.
    — Eleanor Roosevelt
22. In the democracies of the world, the passion for freedom of speech and of thought is always accentuated when there is an effort anywhere to keep ideas away from people.
    — Eleanor Roosevelt
23. In our country we must trust the people to hear and see both the good and the bad and to choose the good.
    — Eleanor Roosevelt
24. You can’t move so fast that you try to change the mores faster than people can accept it. That doesn’t mean you do nothing.
    — Eleanor Roosevelt
25. We must preserve our right to think and differ.
    — Eleanor Roosevelt
26. This living in a democracy is a problem, isn’t it?
    — Eleanor Roosevelt
27. It is our freedom to progress that makes us all want to live and to go on.
    — Eleanor Roosevelt
28. There is a desire for progress in the hearts of all men, and it is the sense of frustration and inability to move forward that brings violent revolution.
    — Eleanor Roosevelt
29. Too often the great decisions are originated and given form in bodies made up wholly of men.
    — Eleanor Roosevelt
30. How hard it is to project oneself into the future.
    — Eleanor Roosevelt
31. The will of the people shall be the basis of the authority of government.
    — Eleanor Roosevelt
32. Hate and force cannot be in just a part of the world without having an effect on the rest of it.
    — Eleanor Roosevelt
33. This freedom of which men speak, for which they fight, seems to some people a perilous thing. It has to be earned at a bitter cost and then — it has to be lived with. For freedom makes a huge requirement of every human being. With freedom comes responsibility.
    — Eleanor Roosevelt
34. I’m enormously interested in freedom and retaining the right to have whatever economy we want and to shape it as we want.
    — Eleanor Roosevelt

Frequently Asked Questions About Eleanor Roosevelt Quotes

What is Eleanor Roosevelt’s most famous quote?

“No one can make you feel inferior without your consent” is her most famous line, written in her 1937 autobiography This Is My Story. It reflects a lifetime spent facing public criticism with dignity.

Did Eleanor Roosevelt really say “the future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams”?

No primary source has ever been found for this line, despite its wide circulation. Quote researchers have been unable to trace it to her books, columns, or speeches, so it is honestly marked “Attributed to Eleanor Roosevelt” wherever it appears.

Did Eleanor Roosevelt say “do one thing every day that scares you”?

No. Quote Investigator traced this line to Mary Schmich’s 1997 newspaper column “Wear Sunscreen” (often misattributed to Kurt Vonnegut). Roosevelt’s genuine counsel on fear was: “You must do the thing you think you cannot do.”

Where did Eleanor Roosevelt’s quotes come from?

Her most verified lines come from You Learn by Living (1960), This Is My Story (1937), her My Day newspaper column (1935–1962), and her speeches as chair of the UN Commission on Human Rights.

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