She was a tireless worker for social causes. She served (1945-52, 1961-62) as a U.S. delegate to the United Nations and helped draft the UN Declaration of Human Rights. As a humanitarian and civic leader (among other roles), she worked for the welfare of youth, black Americans, the poor, and women. Her concern for disadvantaged black Americans, prompted her to work closely with organizations such as the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), and in 1939 she resigned from the Daughters of the American Revolution in protest to their preventing black singer Marian Anderson from performing at Constitution Hall.
After the United States entered World War II, Eleanor Roosevelt channeled her energies into the war effort. She did this first by mustering up civilian volunteerism as assistant director of the Office of Civilian Defense (OCD), and by visiting U.S. troops abroad.
(1884 – 1962)
– Eleanor Roosevelt Quotes –
I believe that anyone can conquer fear by doing the things he fears to do, provided he keeps doing them until he gets a record of successful experience behind him.
~ Eleanor Roosevelt
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.
~ Eleanor Roosevelt
Hate and force cannot be in just a part of the world without having an effect on the rest of it.
~ Eleanor Roosevelt
One’s philosophy is not best expressed in words; it is expressed in the choices one makes… and the choices we make are ultimately our responsibility.
~ Eleanor Roosevelt
Only a man’s character is the real criterion of worth.
~ Eleanor Roosevelt
Life must be lived and curiosity kept alive. One must never, for whatever reason, turn his back on life.
~ Eleanor Roosevelt
Sometimes I wonder if we shall ever grow up in our politics and say definite things which mean something, or whether we shall always go on using generalities to which everyone can subscribe, and which mean very little.
~ Eleanor Roosevelt
If life were predictable it would cease to be life, and be without flavor.
~ Eleanor Roosevelt
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
Remember always that you not only have the right to be an individual, you have an obligation to be one.
~ Eleanor Roosevelt
Anyone who knows history, particularly the history of Europe, will, I think, recognize that the domination of education or of government by any one particular religious faith is never a happy arrangement for the people.
~ Eleanor Roosevelt
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
You must do the things you think you cannot do.
~ Eleanor Roosevelt
I’m so glad I never feel important, it does complicate life!
~ Eleanor Roosevelt
In the long run, we shape our lives, and we shape ourselves. The process never ends until we die. And the choices we make are ultimately our own responsibility.
~ Eleanor Roosevelt
Perhaps nature is our best assurance of immortality.
~ Eleanor Roosevelt
You have to accept whatever comes and the only important thing is that you meet it with courage and with the best that you have to give.
~ Eleanor Roosevelt
When you cease to make a contribution, you begin to die.
~ Eleanor Roosevelt
As for accomplishments, I just did what I had to do as things came along.
~ Eleanor Roosevelt
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, but it means that you do the things that need to be done according to priority.
~ Eleanor Roosevelt
Freedom makes a huge requirement of every human being. With freedom comes responsibility. For the person who is unwilling to grow up, the person who does not want to carry is own weight, this is a frightening prospect.
~ Eleanor Roosevelt
Have convictions. Be friendly. Stick to your beliefs as they stick to theirs. Work as hard as they do.
~ Eleanor Roosevelt
My experience has been that work is almost the best way to pull oneself out of the depths.
~ Eleanor Roosevelt
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
Probably the happiest period in life most frequently is in middle age, when the eager passions of youth are cooled, and the infirmities of age not yet begun; as we see that the shadows, which are at morning and evening so large, almost entirely disappear at midday.
~ Eleanor Roosevelt
You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You are able to say to yourself, “I lived through this horror. I can take the next thing that comes along.”
~ Eleanor Roosevelt
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
Too often the great decisions are originated and given form in bodies made up wholly of men, or so completely dominated by them that whatever of special value women have to offer is shunted aside without expression.
~ Eleanor Roosevelt
I can not believe that war is the best solution. No one won the last war, and no one will win the next war.
~ Eleanor Roosevelt
