Happy Birthday, Eleanor

Painting by Daniel Greene

It's the birthday of the longest-serving First Lady, Eleanor Roosevelt, born in New York City (1884) who said, "A woman is like a tea bag. You never know how strong she is until she gets into hot water." She began a secret courtship with her cousin Franklin Delano Roosevelt. During World War I, she went off to Europe and visited wounded and shell-shocked soldiers in hospitals there. Later, during her husband's presidency, she campaigned hard on civil rights issues — not a universally popular thing in the 1930s and 1940s.

After FDR died in 1945, she moved from the White House to Hyde Park, New York, and taught International Relations at Brandeis University. As anti-communist witch-hunting began to sweep the U.S., she stuck up for freedom of association in a way that few Americans were brave or bold enough to do. She chided Hollywood producers for being so "chicken-hearted about speaking up for the freedom of their industry." She said that the "American public is capable of doing its own censoring" and that "the judge who decides whether what [the film industry] does is good or bad is the man or woman who attends the movies."

She said that the Un-American Activities Committee was creating the atmosphere of a police state in America, "where people close doors before they state what they think or look over their shoulders apprehensively before they express an opinion."
In 1947, a couple years before the McCarthy Era had reached full swing, she announced, "The Un-American Activities Committee seems to me to be better for a police state than for the USA."

She once said, "We have to face the fact that either all of us are going to die together or we are going to learn to live together and if we are to live together we have to talk."

I think that somehow, we learn who we really are and then live with that decision.
Eleanor Roosevelt

I think, at a child's birth, if a mother could ask a fairy godmother to endow it with the most useful gift, that gift should be curiosity.
Eleanor Roosevelt

I used to tell my husband that, if he could make me 'understand' something, it would be clear to all the other people in the country.
Eleanor Roosevelt

I'm so glad I never feel important, it does complicate life!
Eleanor Roosevelt

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

In all our contacts it is probably the sense of being really needed and wanted which gives us the greatest satisfaction and creates the most lasting bond.
Eleanor Roosevelt

In the long run, we shape our lives, and we shape ourselves. The process never ends until we die. And the choices we make are ultimately our own responsibility.
Eleanor Roosevelt

It is better to light a candle than curse the darkness.
Eleanor Roosevelt

It is not fair to ask of others what you are not willing to do yourself.
Eleanor Roosevelt

It is not more vacation we need - it is more vocation.
Eleanor Roosevelt

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.
Eleanor Roosevelt

It takes as much energy to wish as it does to plan.
Eleanor Roosevelt

It's better to light a candle than to curse the darkness.
Eleanor Roosevelt

Justice cannot be for one side alone, but must be for both.
Eleanor Roosevelt

Life must be lived and curiosity kept alive. One must never, for whatever reason, turn his back on life.
Eleanor Roosevelt

My experience has been that work is almost the best way to pull oneself out of the depths.
Eleanor Roosevelt

Never allow a person to tell you no who doesn't have the power to say yes.
Eleanor Roosevelt

No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.
Eleanor Roosevelt

Old age has deformities enough of its own. It should never add to them the deformity of vice.
Eleanor Roosevelt

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.
Eleanor Roosevelt

And, "You wouldn't worry so much about what others think of you if you realized how seldom they do."