Top 10 Eleanor Roosevelt Quotes

Eleanor Roosevelt
(Former First Lady of the United States)

Anna Eleanor Roosevelt was an American politician, diplomat, and activist. She was the longest-serving First Lady of the United States, having held the post from March 1933 to April 1945 during her husband President Franklin D. Roosevelt's four terms in office, and served as United States Delegate to the United Nations General Assembly from 1945 to 1952. President Harry S. Truman later called her the "First Lady of the World" in tribute to her human rights achievements Roosevelt was a member of the prominent American Roosevelt and Livingston families and a niece of President Theodore Roosevelt. She had an unhappy childhood, having suffered the deaths of both parents and one of her brothers at a young age. At 15, she attended Allenwood Academy in London and was deeply influenced by its feminist headmistress Marie Souvestre. Returning to the U.S., she married her fifth cousin once removed, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, in 1905. The Roosevelts' marriage was complicated from the beginning by Franklin's controlling mother, Sara, and after Eleanor discovered her huband's affair with Lucy Mercer in 1918, she resolved to seek fulfillment in a public life of her own. She persuaded Franklin to stay in politics after he was stricken with debilitating polio in 1921, which cost him the normal use of his legs, and Roosevelt began giving speeches and appearing at campaign events in his place. Following Franklin's election as Governor of New York in 1928, and throughout the remainder of Franklin's public career in government, Roosevelt regularly made public appearances on his behalf, and as First Lady while her husband served as President, she significantly reshaped and redefined the role of that office during her own tenure and beyond, for future First Ladies.
Though widely respected in her later years, Roosevelt was a controversial First Lady at the time for her outspokenness, particularly her stance on racial issues. She was the first presidential spouse to hold regular press conferences, write a daily newspaper column, write a monthly magazine column, host a weekly radio show, and speak at a national party convention. On a few occasions, she publicly disagreed with her husband's policies. She launched an experimental community at Arthurdale, West Virginia, for the families of unemployed miners, later widely regarded as a failure. She advocated for expanded roles for women in the workplace, the civil rights of African Americans and Asian Americans, and the rights of World War II refugees.
Following her husband's death in 1945, Roosevelt remained active in politics for the remaining 17 years of her life. She pressed the United States to join and support the United Nations and became its first delegate. She served as the first chair of the UN Commission on Human Rights, and oversaw the drafting of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Later she chaired the John F. Kennedy administration's Presidential Commission on the Status of Women. By the time of her death, Roosevelt was regarded as "one of the most esteemed women in the world"; she was called "the object of almost universal respect" in her New York Times obituary. In 1999, she was ranked ninth in the top ten of Gallup's List of Most Widely Admired People of the 20th Century.

Top 10 Eleanor Roosevelt Quotes

I have spent many years of my life in opposition and I like the role.

A woman is like a tea bag- you never know how strong she is until she gets in hot water.

Friendship with oneself is all-important, because without it one cannot be friends with anyone else in the world.

It seems to me that it is the basic right of any human being to work.

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.

It's good to be middle-aged, things don't matter so much, you don't take it so hard when things happen to you that you don't like. 

Great minds discuss ideas; Average minds discuss events; Small minds discuss people.

I consider those are rich who are doing something they feel worthwhile and which they enjoy doing.

No one can make you feel inferior without your consent. 

Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people. 

Anna Eleanor Roosevelt was born in 1884 at 56 West 37th Street in Manhattan, New York City, to socialites Elliott Bulloch Roosevelt (1860–1894) and Anna Rebecca Hall (1863–1892). From an early age, she preferred to be called by her middle name, Eleanor. Through her father, she was a niece of President Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919). Through her mother, she was a niece of tennis champions Valentine Gill "Vallie" Hall III (1867–1934) and Edward Ludlow Hall (1872–1932). Her mother nicknamed her "Granny" because she acted in such a serious manner as a child. Her mother was also somewhat ashamed of Eleanor's plainness.
Eleanor had two younger brothers: Elliott Jr. (1889–1893) and Gracie Hall Roosevelt, usually called Hall (1891–1941). She also had a half brother, Elliott Roosevelt Mann (1891–1976), through her father's affair with Katy Mann, a servant employed by the family. Roosevelt was born into a world of immense wealth and privilege, as her family was part of New York high society called the "swells"
In the summer of 1902, Eleanor encountered her father's fifth cousin, Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1882–1945), on a train to Tivoli, New York. The two began a secret correspondence and romance, and became engaged on November 22, 1903. Franklin's mother, Sara Ann Delano, opposed the union, and made him promise that the engagement would not be officially announced for a year. "I know what pain I must have caused you," Franklin wrote his mother of his decision. But, he added, "I know my own mind, and known it for a long time, and know that I could never think otherwise." Sara took her son on a Caribbean cruise in 1904, hoping that a separation would squelch the romance, but Franklin remained determined. The wedding date was set to accommodate President Theodore Roosevelt, who agreed to give the bride away.
Eleanor and Franklin were married on St. Patrick's Day, March 17, 1905, in a wedding officiated by Endicott Peabody, the groom's headmaster at Groton School. Eleanor's first cousin Corinne Douglas Robinson was a bridesmaid to Eleanor. The wedding date itself was selected with incumbent president Theodore Roosevelt in mind, since he was already scheduled to be in New York for the St. Patrick's Day parade. Theodore Roosevelt had signed the marriage certificate as a witness and gave his niece Eleanor away because her father had died years before. He garnered almost all the attention from the press, and his attendance at the ceremony was front-page news in the New York Times and other newspapers. When asked for his thoughts on the Roosevelt-Roosevelt union, Theodore Roosevelt said, "It is a good thing to keep the name in the family." The couple spent a preliminary honeymoon of one week at Hyde Park, then set up housekeeping in an apartment in New York. That summer they went on their formal honeymoon, a three-month tour of Europe

In April 1960, Roosevelt was diagnosed with aplastic anemia soon after being struck by a car in New York City. In 1962, she was given steroids, which activated a dormant case of bone marrow tuberculosis, and she died of resulting cardiac failure at her Manhattan home at 55 East 74th Street on the Upper East Side on November 7, 1962, at the age of 78. Her daughter Anna took care of Roosevelt when she was terminally ill in 1962. President John F. Kennedy ordered all United States flags lowered to half-staff throughout the world on November 8 in tribute to Roosevelt.
Among other prominent attendees, President Kennedy and former presidents Truman and Eisenhower honored Roosevelt at funeral services in Hyde Park on November 10, 1962, where she was interred next to her husband in the Rose Garden at "Springwood", the Roosevelt family home. At the services, Adlai Stevenson said: "What other single human being has touched and transformed the existence of so many?", adding, "She would rather light a candle than curse the darkness, and her glow has warmed the world."
After her death, her family deeded the family vacation home on Campobello Island to the governments of the U.S. and Canada, and in 1964 they created the 2,800-acre (11 km2) Roosevelt Campobello International Park.