Hissing Cousins Quotes

“Not surprisingly , Alice's interest in her career as a lecturer lasted about as long as an after-dinner cigarette.”
― Marc Peyser, Hissing Cousins: The Untold Story of Eleanor Roosevelt and Alice Roosevelt Longworth

“I do not mind riding in day coaches...Please do not put yourself or the railroad to extra expense.--First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt”
― Marc Peyser, Hissing Cousins: The Untold Story of Eleanor Roosevelt and Alice Roosevelt Longworth

“When she marched herself into the White House to complain about the paltry number of highly placed women in his administration, he created the President’s Commission on the Status of Women—and made her co-chair.*”
― Marc Peyser, Hissing Cousins: The Untold Story of Eleanor Roosevelt and Alice Roosevelt Longworth

“(The touchiest, and perhaps most ingenious, Soviet argument was to question what right the United States had to determine the notion of individual freedom given the plight of American blacks living under Jim Crow laws. Unfortunately for the Soviets, Eleanor Roosevelt was the last person to pick that fight with.)”
― Marc Peyser, Hissing Cousins: The Untold Story of Eleanor Roosevelt and Alice Roosevelt Longworth

“On the Monday after the inauguration, Eleanor conducted a press conference in the Red Room. That was noteworthy on its own; no First Lady had ever held her own White House press conference before. Eleanor also added a twist: she only allowed female reporters to attend. It was her form of affirmative action, a way to underscore the disadvantages women faced in most professions, including the media.*”
― Marc Peyser, Hissing Cousins: The Untold Story of Eleanor Roosevelt and Alice Roosevelt Longworth

“No race, no religion must ever be permitted to come up when American is meeting with American. The Ku Klux Klan or any other organization which endeavors to do otherwise is committing an un-American act.”38”
― Marc Peyser, Hissing Cousins: The Untold Story of Eleanor Roosevelt and Alice Roosevelt Longworth

“Nonetheless, Eleanor got even with Franklin for the Lucy Mercer mess. As part of her agreeing to stay married, she forced Franklin to make a considerable sacrifice: their sex life. She was thirty-four. He was thirty-six. They never slept in the same bed again.”
― Marc Peyser, Hissing Cousins: The Untold Story of Eleanor Roosevelt and Alice Roosevelt Longworth

“He was also an avowed teetotaler. Josephus Daniels had recently banned alcohol from all navy ships, yards, and stations, suggesting instead that the men drink coffee. Thus the mocking phrase “a cup of Joe” was born.”
― Marc Peyser, Hissing Cousins: The Untold Story of Eleanor Roosevelt and Alice Roosevelt Longworth

“The intra-family rivalry ultimately grew so intense the two sides could not even agree on how to pronounce their name: Rose-eh-velt (Oyster Bay) or Rooze-eh-velt (Hyde Park). —”
― Marc Peyser, Hissing Cousins: The Untold Story of Eleanor Roosevelt and Alice Roosevelt Longworth

“For all their differences, the cousins share part of at least one important legacy: they short-circuited the twentieth century’s rules of gender. Their roles as power players are all the more impressive given that they didn’t even have the right to vote until they were thirty-six. Alice”
― Marc Peyser, Hissing Cousins: The Untold Story of Eleanor Roosevelt and Alice Roosevelt Longworth