Eleanor Quotes

“out. This was the turning point: “From this illness, my father never quite recovered.”26 Had there been any possibility of Eleanor’s experiencing the joys or even routine of childhood, that time was now passing. In August, she was sent away to Grandmother Hall’s, and at Tivoli learned that her brother Elliott Roosevelt, Jr., had been born on September 29. She wrote a letter to her father, in which she wished her parents well, offered advice to the baby’s nurse should the newborn cry, then came straight to the crucial question about any child of Anna Roosevelt’s: “How does he look? Some people tell me he looks like an elephant and some say he is like a bunny.”27 Except for one pitiable moment at Half-Way Nirvana when Eleanor identified an Angora kitten as an “Angostura,”28 those aromatic bitters that flavored her father’s liquor, she showed few signs of registering the impact of addiction on their lives. “Little Eleanor is as happy as the day is long,” Elliott convinced himself during the heavy self-medicated month following his accident: “Plays with her kitten, the puppy & the chickens all the time & is very dirty as a general rule. I am the only ‘off’ member of the family.”29”
― David Michaelis, Eleanor: A Life

“Even as Nazi horrors shocked the world, Eleanor insisted that there was nothing, “given certain kinds of leadership, which could prevent our falling a prey to this same kind of insanity.” She warned: “The idea of superiority of one race over another must not continue within our own country, nor must it grow up in our dealings with the rest of the world.” It was not enough to defeat Nazi Germany “if we at home do not take every step—both through our government and as individuals—to see not only that fairness exists in all employment practices, but that throughout our nation all people are equal citizens. Where the theory of a master race is accepted,” stated Eleanor, “there is danger to all progress in civilization.”
― David Michaelis, Eleanor: A Life

“Study history realistically”—“Do not always believe your country is right”—“You’ll love your country just as much, the same as you love your parents, although you might not always believe them to be right.”
― David Michaelis, Eleanor: A Life

“I see one-third of a nation ill-housed, ill-clad, ill-nourished,” declared FDR in his 1937 inaugural address, reminding the Court and the United States: “The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little.”92 Emboldened by the scale of his electoral victory, the President then opened the second administration by announcing a one-third cut in relief spending and his promise to balance the budget.”
― David Michaelis, Eleanor: A Life

“We have come to a clear realization of the fact that true individual freedom cannot exist without economic security and independence.… People who are hungry and out of a job are the stuff of which dictatorships are made.”
― David Michaelis, Eleanor: A Life

“is not one’s activities which are really important in this life,” she decided. “When you lay down the things you do, day by day, someone else always takes them up. The really important thing is what you are as a person, what your character and your presence have meant to those you lived with, and what influence you have had on the atmosphere of your home or your environment—regardless of whether this was a restricted one, or a broad one which touched many lives and large numbers of people. That is what lives afterwards in the memories and in the hearts of those who knew and loved you. As you influenced these people, so your influence will spread, through their contacts and their activities.”125”
― David Michaelis, Eleanor: A Life

“Mankind can be wiped off the face of the earth by the action of any comparatively small group of people. So it would seem that if we care to survive we must progress in our social and economic development far more rapidly than we have done in the past.”28”
― David Michaelis, Eleanor: A Life

“was a formative presence in global diplomacy.86 Cousin Alice pronounced calling and card-leaving “a Washington mania that no sane human beings should let themselves in for.”87 It was also work: it took patience and stamina and kindness; Alice did not want the authority of donkey work, nor did she have the impulse to be kind. Her object was to be feared—to be the alpha female whose invitations to her own select circle were coveted.88 Eleanor’s authority rested on being in earnest and in her instinct for knowing just when someone needed a bunch of violets or a small present for a voyage to France. She never shirked from the toil of the card case; she never claimed “delicacy,”89 or “a brief illness,” code among official ladies for marital strain, excessive menstruation, or depression.90 She made one exception to her all-in cooperation as a naval wife. To staff the gloomy house on N Street, she had brought from New York four servants, all white, who joined Auntie Bye’s two oldest retainers, both African-American. But Franklin’s boss, devoutly Christian, had also been North Carolina’s all too effective collaborator in resisting Reconstruction’s political empowerment of formerly enslaved African Americans.91 In 1898, as editor of the state’s most prominent newspaper, Daniels served as the propaganda wing of a conspiracy to overthrow the elected multiracial government”
― David Michaelis, Eleanor: A Life

“Anna wanted her daughter to be precisely as she, Anna, was; saving that, a fine reflection. “Eleanor, I hardly know what’s to happen to you,” she would say, in legend, if not in fact. “You’re so plain that you really have nothing to do except be good.”
― David Michaelis, Eleanor: A Life

“perhaps because much further back I had had to face certain difficulties until I decided to accept the fact that a man must be what he is, life must be lived as it is… and you cannot live at all if you do not learn to adapt yourself to your life as it happens to be.”128”
― David Michaelis, Eleanor: A Life

“One hour of going to see things with your own eyes is more worthwhile than twenty hours of talking about things.”
― David Michaelis, Eleanor: A Life