Eleanor Roosevelt

I think I have a good deal of common sense, and I think that's more important than brilliance.

Do one thing every day that scares you.

I once had a rose named after me and I was very flattered. But I was not pleased to read the description in the catalog: ‘No good in a bed, but fine against a wall.’

A woman is like a tea bag—you can’t tell how strong she is until you put her in hot water.

You must do the things you think you cannot do.

I have never felt that anything really belonged to me unless I paid for it.

If life were predictable, it would cease to be life and be without flavor.

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

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.

The battle for the individual rights of women is one of the longest, most arduous, and most significant battles for human rights.

It takes courage to love, but pain through love is the purifying fire which those who are brave enough to love know. We all know people who are so much afraid of pain that they shut themselves up in a prison of their own making and never let themselves out. They are afraid of loving, afraid of being loved, afraid of living. They are afraid of the adventure of life.

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.

The purpose of life is to live it, to taste experience to the utmost, to reach out eagerly and without fear for newer and richer experience.

With the new day comes new strength and new thoughts.

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.

Many people will walk in and out of your life, but only true friends will leave footprints in your heart.

It is not in the still calm of the laboratory that men and women come to know truth. It is in the noise and tumult of the world that we learn what is true.

Character building begins in our infancy, and continues until death.

You must be honest with yourself before you can be honest with others.

Happiness is not a goal; it is a by-product.