Eleanor Quotes - Page 3

• Eleanor Marx was her father's first biographer. All subsequent biographies of Karl Marx, and most of Engels, draw on her work as their primary sources for the family history, often without knowing it. I think if she'd been a son, she would have been referenced more.

  Rachel Holmes

  Father, Son, Thinking

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• Eleanor Roosevelt loved to write. She was a wonderful child writer. I mean, she wrote beautiful essays and stories as a child. And Marie Souvestre really appreciated Eleanor Roosevelt's talents and encouraged her talents. Also, she spoke perfect French. She grew up speaking French. She's now at a french-speaking school where, you know, girls are coming from all over the world. Not everybody speaks French.

  Blanche Wiesen Cook

  Beautiful, Girl, Children

  Source: www.pbs.org

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• I think her Grandmother Hall gave her a great sense of family love, and reassurance. Her grandmother did love her, like her father, unconditionally. And despite the order and the discipline - and home at certain hours and out at certain hours and reading at certain hours - there was a surprising amount of freedom. Eleanor Roosevelt talks about how the happiest moments of her days were when she would take a book out of the library, which wasn't censored.

  Blanche Wiesen Cook

  Father, Book, Reading

  Source: www.pbs.org

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• In one way, it is this sense of order and also love that, I think, really saved Eleanor Roosevelt's life. And in her own writing, she's very warm about her grandmother, even though, if you look at contemporary accounts, they're accounts of horror at the Dickensian scene that Tivoli represents: bleak and drear and dark and unhappy. But Eleanor Roosevelt in her own writings is not very unhappy about Tivoli.

  Blanche Wiesen Cook

  Writing, Grandmother, Dark

  Source: www.pbs.org

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• I think that, very often there's a pain that's just too painful to touch. You'll break apart. And I think her mother's death and disappearance and abandonment was something she just never could deal with. Eleanor Roosevelt, when she's really very unwell in 1936, she takes to her bed. She has a mysterious flu.

  Blanche Wiesen Cook

  Mother, Pain, Thinking

  Source: www.pbs.org

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• Her mother died at the age of 29, essentially turning her face to the wall and deciding to die. And so we can only imagine the agony she felt. And Eleanor Roosevelt really wanted to make her mother happier, and - and to make her live, you know, make her want to live. And there's something about, you know, when your mother dies, this sense of abandonment. I think Eleanor Roosevelt had a lifelong fear of abandonment and sense of abandonment after her parents' death.

  Blanche Wiesen Cook

  Mother, Wall, Thinking

  Source: www.pbs.org

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• I mean, her father was an alcoholic, and her mother was the suffering wife of a man who she could never predict what he would do, where he would be, who he would be. And it's sort of interesting because Eleanor Roosevelt never writes about her mother's agony. She only writes about her father's agony. But her whole life is dedicated to making it better for people in the kind of need and pain and anguish that her mother was in.

  Blanche Wiesen Cook

  Mother, Pain, Father

  Source: www.pbs.org

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• She writes that one of the moments that she felt most useful was when her mother had a headache, and she would stroke her head and rub her forehead. And I think Eleanor Roosevelt's entire life was dedicated to two things: (one) making it better for all people, people in trouble and in need, like her family.

  Blanche Wiesen Cook

  Mother, Writing, Thinking

  Source: www.pbs.org

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• Eleanor Roosevelt never thought that she was attractive. She never thought that she was really sufficiently appealing. And I think her whole life was a response to her effort to get her mother to pay attention to her, to love her, and to love her as much as she loved her brothers.

  Blanche Wiesen Cook

  Mother, Brother, Thinking

  Source: www.pbs.org

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• I can't really cook, but the first dish I ever made was for my girlfriend, Eleanor. I made chicken breast wrapped in ham, homemade mashed potatoes, and gravy.

  Louis Tomlinson

  Girlfriend, Ham, Potatoes

  "Exclusive Interview With 1D's Louis!". Interview with Emily Laurence, www.seventeen.com. July 9, 2012.

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• And Eleanor's husband was the man who did the interning. And I think they - Governor Warren, who was later to become such an impassioned Chief Justice on all sorts of human rights issues, was very big in the internment process. And I think that we simply sometimes tend not to understand or remember how people felt.

  William A. Rusher

  Husband, Thinking, Men

  Source: www.pbs.org

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• I think Eleanor Roosevelt always had a most incredible comfort writing letters. I mean, she was in the habit of writing letters. And that's where she allowed her fantasies to flourish. That's where she allowed her emotions to really evolve. And that's where she allowed herself to express herself really fully, and sometimes whimsically, very often romantically. And it really starts with her letters to her father, who is lifelong her primary love.

  Blanche Wiesen Cook

  Father, Writing, Mean

  Source: www.pbs.org

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• Eleanor Roosevelt started off almost every early article she wrote, starting with, "My mother was the most beautiful woman I'd ever seen." And I think her life was a constant and continual and lifelong contrast with her mother.

  Blanche Wiesen Cook

  Beautiful, Mother, Thinking

  Source: www.pbs.org

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• Well, the reality of her father was that he was a very diseased alcoholic, who died at the age of 34. And one always has to pause to wonder how much you have to drink to die at 34. And he was a really tragic father. I mean, he was absolutely unreliable. He was absolutely involved with various people. He had outside families, outside children, outside wives. He made his wife's life miserable. And she [Eleanor Roosevelt]ignored all of his faults and retained this sense of him as the perfect father.

  Blanche Wiesen Cook

  Children, Father, Mean

  Source: www.pbs.org

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• It's interesting to me that really one of the first things she [Eleanor Roosevelt]did as First Lady was to collect her father's letters and publish a book called The Letters of My Father, essentially, hunting big game, The Letters of Elliott Roosevelt. And it really was an act of redemption, really one of her first acts of redemption as she entered the White House. She was going to redeem her father's honor. And publishing his letters, reconnecting with her childhood really fortified her to go on into the difficult White House years.

  Blanche Wiesen Cook

  Father, Book, Hunting

  Source: www.pbs.org

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• Well, when Eleanor Roosevelt's mother dies, she goes to live with her Grandmother Hall. And her Grandmother Hall is in mourning. She's in widow's weeds. She's in her 50s, but appears very old. And she's exhausted from raising rather out-of-control children. Her favorite daughter, Anna, has died (Eleanor's mother), and she has living at home two other sons, Vallie and Eddie. And they are incredible sportsmen, incredible drinkers, out-of-control alcoholics.

  Blanche Wiesen Cook

  Daughter, Mother, Weed

  Source: www.pbs.org

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• And Grandmother Hall really imagines that she can raise Eleanor and her two brothers differently than these children were raised. And if she is very strict and everything is very regimented and ordered and disciplined, that they will become the perfect children who her own children did not become.

  Blanche Wiesen Cook

  Brother, Children, Grandmother

  Source: www.pbs.org

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• And during the campaign of 1936, she writes that she and her brother would always rather be out doing things when they're sick, rather than take to their beds. And I think Eleanor Roosevelt always responded to pain by doing more, by doing something, by being active. And I think she just couldn't bear to look at her childhood grief. And she didn't.

  Blanche Wiesen Cook

  Brother, Pain, Grief

  Source: www.pbs.org

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• I'm not comparing myself to Bobby Kennedy by any stretch, but he was opposed by the liberal establishment, too. Eleanor Roosevelt was the biggest opponent to him running.

  Harold Ford, Jr.

  Running, Opponents, Bobby Kennedy

  "A Scrubbed Toe in the Race" by Maureen Dowd, www.nytimes.com. February 6, 2010.

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• A line from one of my 1997 columns - 'Do one thing every day that scares you' - is now widely attributed to Eleanor Roosevelt, though I have yet to see any evidence that she ever said it and I don't believe she did. She said some things about fear, but not that thing.

  Mary Schmich

  Believe, Scare, Lines

  Mary Schmich (2012). “The Best of Mary Schmich: Selected Writings by the Chicago Tribune's Winner of the 2012 Pulitzer Prize for Commentary”, p.362, Agate Digital

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• Occasionally I’ll be sitting somewhere and I’ll be listening to someone perhaps not saying the kindest things about me. And I’ll look down at my hand and I’ll sort of pinch my skin to make sure it still has the requisite thickness I know Eleanor Roosevelt expects me to have.

  Hillary Clinton

  Hands, Listening, Skins

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• Either we're removing a dictator who currently has plans to fund terrorism against American citizens or -- if Bush is completely wrong and Eleanor Clift is completely right -- we're just removing a dictator who plans to terrorize a lot of people in the region, but not Americans specifically. Even for someone like me, who doesn't want America to be the world's policeman, the risk of precipitous action against Saddam Hussein doesn't keep me up at night.

  Ann Coulter

  Night, America, People

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• She (Eleanor Roosevelt) got even in a way that was almost cruel. She forgave them.

  Ralph McGill

  Inspirational, Revenge, Way

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• Eleanor hadn't written him a letter. It was a postcard. GREETINGS FROM THE LAND OF 10,000 LAKES it said on the front. Park turned it over and recognized her scratchy handwriting. It filled his head with song lyrics. He sat up. He smiled. Something heavy and winged took off from his chest. Eleanor hadn't written him a letter, it was a postcard. Just three words long.

  Rainbow Rowell

  Song, Lakes, Land

  Rainbow Rowell (2016). “The Rainbow Rowell Collection: Eleanor & Park, Fangirl, Landline, and Carry On”, p.291, St. Martin's Griffin

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• Eleanor had never thought about killing herself – ever – but she thought a lot about stopping. Just running until she couldn’t run anymore. Jumping from something so high that she’d never hit the bottom.

  Rainbow Rowell

  Running, Jumping, Stopping

  Rainbow Rowell (2016). “The Rainbow Rowell Collection: Eleanor & Park, Fangirl, Landline, and Carry On”, p.264, St. Martin's Griffin

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