First Ladies Quotes

“Mrs. Ford, “Perhaps no first lady in our history, with the possible exception of Eleanor Roosevelt, has touched so many of us in such a personal way…because she showed [us] it was not wrong for a good person and a strong person to be imperfect and ask for help. You gave us a gift and we thank you.”]”
― Susan Swain, First Ladies: Presidential Historians on the Lives of 45 Iconic American Women

“[A few months after they came into office, Mrs. Ford discovered she had breast cancer.] This was, in some ways, the indelible moment when she first impressed herself on the American people. The whole Ford family did. It is really hard, forty years later, to conceive of the degree to which people didn’t talk about this disease. Euphemisms were employed. Even in obituaries, people didn’t die of breast cancer. They died of a “wasting illness.” What Mrs. Ford did was to bring this out in the open and, overnight, transform the way women, in particular, looked at this disease. For her, it was also a lesson. It was her first and most important lesson in the influence that a first lady could have just by being herself, by shining the light on a dark corner, by educating the public. It initiated a national conversation, a conversation among women, a conversation between women and their doctors. When it comes to women’s health issues, literally, history is divided into two periods: there’s before Betty, and after Betty.”
― Susan Swain, First Ladies: Presidential Historians on the Lives of 45 Iconic American Women

“Being ladylike does not require silence. Why should my husband’s job or yours prevent us from being ourselves? I do not believe that being first lady should prevent me from expressing my ideas.”
― Susan Swain, First Ladies: Presidential Historians on the Lives of 45 Iconic American Women

“Bess Truman’s greatest contribution to the role of first lady was demonstrating that you can be a strong, influential partner and you don’t have to be on the front page or on the TV every day. Your influence can be strong without it being public.”
― Susan Swain, First Ladies: Presidential Historians on the Lives of 45 Iconic American Women

“We are not any of us happy to be where we are, but there’s nothing to be done about it except to do our best—and forget about the sacrifices and many unpleasant things that bob up.”
― Susan Swain, First Ladies: Presidential Historians on the Lives of 45 Iconic American Women

“Dear Lord, lest I continue in my complacent ways, help me to remember that somewhere someone died for me today. And if there be war, help me to remember to ask and to answer, am I worth dying for?”
― Susan Swain, First Ladies: Presidential Historians on the Lives of 45 Iconic American Women

“Eleanor Roosevelt was there for him like nobody else. With that utter hell he was living, that anybody would feel, she showed her true colors of friendship, loyalty, and love.… That realigned their marriage. After that, he adored her for more reasons. She became somebody who took care of him when he was beyond down.”
― Susan Swain, First Ladies: Presidential Historians on the Lives of 45 Iconic American Women

“Mlle. Souvestre saw in Eleanor this spunk and this mind that nobody had seen. She taught her that the only way to really be sure about what you think is to be able to argue both sides of an issue with equal conviction.”
― Susan Swain, First Ladies: Presidential Historians on the Lives of 45 Iconic American Women

“We have nothing to fear but fear itself,”
― Susan Swain, First Ladies: Presidential Historians on the Lives of 45 Iconic American Women

“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.”
― Susan Swain, First Ladies: Presidential Historians on the Lives of 45 Iconic American Women

“In the same year that Hoover was elected, 1928, Chicago elected an African American congressman by the name of Oscar De Priest. He was the first African American to get elected to Congress in twenty-eight years, and so the issue arose about what to do about inviting Mrs. De Priest to one of the teas.”
― Susan Swain, First Ladies: Presidential Historians on the Lives of 45 Iconic American Women

“The difference between the two is interesting, though. When there were holidays, Calvin would know who wasn’t at the table; Grace took joy with whoever was at the table. They just were very different in the way they handled it.”
― Susan Swain, First Ladies: Presidential Historians on the Lives of 45 Iconic American Women

“Ellen felt that as long as she was in the White House, not a place where she particularly wanted to be, she would use her position to do as much good as she could.”
― Susan Swain, First Ladies: Presidential Historians on the Lives of 45 Iconic American Women

“There were many stories about his weight. In fact, Chief Justice Melville Weston Fuller said, “The president got up on the streetcar the other day and gave a seat to three women.”
― Susan Swain, First Ladies: Presidential Historians on the Lives of 45 Iconic American Women

“Woman’s mind is as strong as man’s, equal in all things and superior in some.”
― Susan Swain, First Ladies: Presidential Historians on the Lives of 45 Iconic American Women

“[Jane Pierce spent her White House days cloistered on the second floor of the White House, where she would compose letters to her dead son and connect with spiritualists.]”
― Susan Swain, First Ladies: Presidential Historians on the Lives of 45 Iconic American Women

“The Pierces made the White House a morbid place.”
― Susan Swain, First Ladies: Presidential Historians on the Lives of 45 Iconic American Women

“[Eleven-year-old Bennie died before his parents’ eyes in a train wreck.]”
― Susan Swain, First Ladies: Presidential Historians on the Lives of 45 Iconic American Women

“During the election of 1840, supporters of Van Buren started to refer to him as “Old Kinderhook.” The phrase “OK” had just hit the streets in Boston. It was picked up by the campaign as a way to talk about “Old Kinderhook.” It stuck, and “OK” became the universal expression that we use all the time.”
― Susan Swain, First Ladies: Presidential Historians on the Lives of 45 Iconic American Women

“She was accused of being married before she met Jackson, and she was, in fact. She was married very unhappily to a man who treated her and her family very badly. Her whole family hated him, and, out West, they didn’t believe that you had to stick by your man for fifty years if he was horrible. They believed in dissolving an unhappy marriage. And so, they did. [Rachel was also criticized during the campaign because] she smoked a pipe and she had a Tennessee accent; she did not have an East Coast accent.”
― Susan Swain, First Ladies: Presidential Historians on the Lives of 45 Iconic American Women

“I had rather be a doorkeeper in the house of God than live in that palace in Washington.”
― Susan Swain, First Ladies: Presidential Historians on the Lives of 45 Iconic American Women

“Monroe has a fine conjugal feeling. He can’t stand to be separated from his wife so he’s taking her with him to go to Europe.” That was pretty much their attitude. Monroe was devoted to family as well.… If they had their choice of how they would spend time, it would be with their family.”
― Susan Swain, First Ladies: Presidential Historians on the Lives of 45 Iconic American Women

“A lot of the criticism toward the Madisons focused on James Madison, who was so tiny and pygmy-like. Somebody called him an anchovy.… Thomas Jefferson was big and tall. Washington was described as a hunk.”
― Susan Swain, First Ladies: Presidential Historians on the Lives of 45 Iconic American Women

“There was a lot going on during those years. He was quite palsied and he couldn’t write his own letters, so he had someone write for him, but he carried on this incredible correspondence with Jefferson during those years. [Their letter writing culminated with these two bitter enemies coming to peace with one another, and both dying on the same day, the fiftieth anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.]”
― Susan Swain, First Ladies: Presidential Historians on the Lives of 45 Iconic American Women

“Abigail refused to go visit her daughter because she said, “I can’t leave John. I’m not going to leave John.” Her daughter had a mastectomy without anesthesia, and came from New York state to her parents’ home, to die.”
― Susan Swain, First Ladies: Presidential Historians on the Lives of 45 Iconic American Women

“There’s one heart-wrenching period where she’s pregnant and she’s writing right up until the time when she begins labor. Because of the time and distance, which is something that is so hard for us to understand now with our instant communication, he’s writing back, hoping that’s she’s going to have a daughter and that everything will be fine. In the meantime, the infant is born dead.”
― Susan Swain, First Ladies: Presidential Historians on the Lives of 45 Iconic American Women

“In the new code of laws which I suppose it will be necessary for you to make, I desire you would remember the ladies and be more generous and favorable to them than your ancestors. Do not put such unlimited power into the hands of the husbands. Remember, all men would be tyrants if they could. If particular care and attention is not paid to the ladies, we are determined to foment a rebellion, and will not hold ourselves bound by any laws in which we have no voice or representation.”
― Susan Swain, First Ladies: Presidential Historians on the Lives of 45 Iconic American Women

“[After George Washington died, Martha left their bedroom and moved to a garret in the mansion.] When he died, she said, “It’s over. My life is just waiting now.” She really and truly did not want to be in that room, where they had been so happy.”
― Susan Swain, First Ladies: Presidential Historians on the Lives of 45 Iconic American Women

“our happiness or misery depends upon our disposition and not our circumstances.”
― Susan Swain, First Ladies: Presidential Historians on the Lives of 45 Iconic American Women

“Around five in the afternoon, Ellen Wilson’s labored breathing ceased. An emotionally devastated Woodrow expressed the wish that someone might assassinate him.”
― Susan Swain, First Ladies: Presidential Historians on the Lives of 45 Iconic American Women