Quotes by First Ladies - Page 3

To be mature you have to realize what you value most... Not to arrive at a clear understanding of one's own values is a tragic waste. You have missed the whole point of what life is for.
Eleanor Roosevelt
I am convinced that every effort must be made in childhood to teach the young to use their own minds. For one thing is sure: If they don't make up their minds, someone will do it for them.
Eleanor Roosevelt
...Learn to concentrate, to give all your attention to the thing at hand, and then to be able to put it aside and go on to the next thing without confusion. My husband said that being President of the United States meant that you saw more kinds of people, took up more subjects, and learn more about a variety of things than anyone else. But it required complete concentration on the person you were with and on what he was saying. When that person left the room, you pulled down a shade in your mind, and you were ready, with your attention free, for what the next person had to say. You might have to shift from banking to forestry, but each subject had the attention and concentration it required and each, in turn, was put in the back of the mind, ready to be called upon when needed.
Eleanor Roosevelt
Love can often be misguided and do as much harm as good, but respect can do only good. It assumes that the other person's stature is as large as one's own, his rights as reasonable, his needs as important.
Eleanor Roosevelt
If you want a world ruled by law and not by force you must build up, from the very grassroots, a respect for law.
Eleanor Roosevelt
What one has to do usually can be done.
Eleanor Roosevelt
America is not a pile of goods, more luxury, more comforts, a better telephone system, a greater number of cars. America is a dream of greater justice and opportunity for the average man and, if we can not obtain it, all our otherachievements amount to nothing.
Eleanor Roosevelt
Even though people may be well known, they hold in their hearts the emotions of a simple person for the moments that are the most important of those we know on earth: birth, marriage and death.
Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis
If man is to be liberated to enjoy more leisure, he must also be prepared to enjoy this leisure fully and creatively.
Eleanor Roosevelt
These are times in which a genius would wish to live. It is not in the still calm of life, or the repose of a pacific station, that great characters are formed.
Abigail Adams
Character building begins in our infancy and continues until death.
Eleanor Roosevelt
Inrealized how valuable the art and practice of writing letters are, and how important it is to remind people of what a treasure letters--handwritten letters--can be. In our throwaway era of quick phone calls, faxes, and email, it's all to easy never to find the time to write letters. That's a great pity--for historians and the rest of us.
Nancy Reagan
If you bungle raising children, I don't think whatever else you do matters very much.
Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis
The theater has been called the pulse of the people.
Abigail Adams
You not only have a right to be an individual. You have a responsibility.
Eleanor Roosevelt
We are not judges for ourselves until circumstances call us to act.
Abigail Adams
We have to make these young people (of the Depression) feel that they are necessary. (They should be given) "certain things for which youth craves – the chance for self-sacrifice for an ideal.
Eleanor Roosevelt
This is your life, not someone else's. It is your own feeling of what is important, not what people will say. Sooner or later, you are bound to discover that you cannot please all of the people around you all of the time. Some of t hem will attribute to you motives you never dreamed of. Some of them will misinterpret your words and actions, making them completely alien to you. So you had better learn fairly early that you must not expect to have everyone understand what you say and what you do.
Eleanor Roosevelt
It seems to me that I cannot afford, as a self-respecting individual, to refuse to do a thing merely because it will make me disliked or bring down a storm of criticism on my head.
Eleanor Roosevelt
You gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You are able to say to yourself, 'I have lived through this horror. I can take the next thing that comes along.' You must do the thing you think you cannot do.
Eleanor Roosevelt
You wouldn't worry so much about what others think of you if you realized how seldom they do.
Eleanor Roosevelt
What could we accomplish if we knew we could not fail?
Eleanor Roosevelt
Do the things that interest you and do them with all your heart. Don't be concerned about whether people are watching you or criticizing you. The chances are that they aren't paying any attention to you. It's your attention to yourself that is so stultifying. But you have to disregard yourself as completely as possible. If you fail the first time then you'll just have to try harder the second time. After all, there's no real reason why you should fail. Just stop thinking about yourself.
Eleanor Roosevelt
But the heavy stroke which most of all distresses me is my dear Mother. I cannot overcome my too selfish sorrow, all her tenderness towards me, her care and anxiety for my welfare at all times, her watchfulness over my infant years, her advice and instruction in maturer age; all, all indear her memory to me, and highten my sorrow for her loss. At the same time I know a patient submission is my Duty. I will strive to obtain it! But the lenient hand of time alone can blunt the keen Edg of Sorrow. He who deignd to weep over a departed Friend, will surely forgive a sorrow which at all times desires to be bounded and restrained, by a firm Belief that a Being of infinite wisdom and unbounded Goodness, will carve out my portion in tender mercy towards me! Yea tho he slay me I will trust in him said holy Job. What tho his corrective Hand hath been streached against me; I will not murmer. Tho earthly comforts are taken away I will not repine, he who gave them has surely a right to limit their Duration, and has continued them to me much longer than deserved. I might have been striped of my children as many others have been. I might o! forbid it Heaven, I might have been left a solitary widow. Still I have many blessing left, many comforts to be thankfull for, and rejoice in. I am not left to mourn as one without hope. My dear parent knew in whom she had Believed...The violence of her disease soon weakned her so that she was unable to converse, but whenever she could speak, she testified her willingness to leave the world and an intire resignation to the Divine Will. She retaind her Senses to the last moment of her Existance, and departed the world with an easy tranquility, trusting in the merrits of a Redeamer," (p. 81 & 82).
Abigail Adams
Many people will walk in and out of your life, but only true friends will leave footprints in your heart
Eleanor Roosevelt
Do you think that God would separate me from my husband if I killed myself? I feel as though I am going out of my mind at times. Wouldn’t God understand that I just want to be with him?
Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis
I was born upon the prairie, where the wind blew free, and there was nothing to break the light of the sun. I was born where there were no enclosures, and where everything drew a free breath." the Great Comanche war chief, Ten Bears
Laura Bush
It is better to light a candle than curse the darkness.
Eleanor Roosevelt
The English language lacks the words to mourn an absence. For the loss of a parent, grandparent, spouse, child or friend, we have all manner of words and phrases, some helpful some not. Still we are conditioned to say something, even if it is only “I’m sorry for your loss.” But for an absence, for someone who was never there at all, we are wordless to capture that particular emptiness. For those who deeply want children and are denied them, those missing babies hover like silent ephemeral shadows over their lives. Who can describe the feel of a tiny hand that is never held?
Laura Bush
We have too many high sounding words and too few actions that correspond with them.
Abigail Adams
But let no person say what they would or would not do, since we are not judges for ourselves until circumstances call us to act.
Abigail Adams
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.
Abigail Adams
You have only one chance to raise your child.
Jackie Kennedy
There are many little ways to enlarge your child's world. Love of books is the best of all.
Jackie Kennedy
Clinton lied. A man might forget where he parks or where he lives, but he never forgets oral sex, no matter how bad it is.
Barbara Bush
The encouraging thing is that every time you meet a situation, though you may think at the time it is an impossibility and you go through the tortures of the damned, once you have met it and lived through it you find that forever after you are freer than you ever were before. If you can live through that, you can live through anything. You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face.
Eleanor Roosevelt
Libraries offer, for free, the wisdom of the ages--and sages--and, simply put, there's something for everyone inside.
Laura Bush
to us, family means putting your arms around each other and being there.
Barbara Bush
You tell me that you sometimes view the dark side of your Diana, and there no doubt you discover many Spots which I rather wish were erased, than conceal'd from you. Do not judge by this, that your opinion is an indifferent thing to me, (were it so, I should look forward with a heavey Heart,) but it is far otherways, for I had rather stand fair there, and be thought well of by Lysander than by the greater part of the World besides. I would fain hope that those faults which you discover, proceed more, from a wrong Head, than a bad Heart. E'er long May I be connected with a Friend from whose Example I may form a more faultless conduct, and whose benevolent mind will lead him to pardon, what he cannot amend.
Abigail Adams
I hate to complain...No one is without difficulties, whether in high or low life, and every person knows best where their own shoe pinches.
Abigail Adams
The habits of a vigorous mind are born in contending with difficulties.
Abigail Adams
These are the times in which a genius would wish to live. It is not in the still calm of life, or the repose of a pacific station, that great characters are formed. The habits of a vigorous mind are formed in contending with difficulties. Great necessities call out great virtues. When a mind is raised, and animated by scenes that engage the heart, then those qualities which would otherwise lay dormant, wake into life and form the character of the hero and the statesman.
Abigail Adams
I feel that the care of libraries and the use of books, and the knowledge of books, is a tremendously vital thing, and that we who deal with books and who love books have a great opportunity to bring about something in this country which is more vital here than anywhere else, because we have the chance to make a democracy that will be a real democracy.
Eleanor Roosevelt
Good leaders inspire people to have confidence in their leader. Great leaders inspire people to have confidence in themselves.
Eleanor Roosevelt
To handle yourself, use your head; to handle others, use your heart.
Eleanor Roosevelt
You can't move so fast that you try to change the mores faster than people can accept it. That doesn't mean you do nothing, but it means that you do the things that need to be done according to priority.
Eleanor Roosevelt
The natural tenderness and delicacy of our constitution, added to the many dangers we are subject to from your sex, renders it almost impossible for a single lady to travel without injury to her character. And those who have a protector in a husband have, generally speaking, obstacles to prevent their roving.
Abigail Adams
I think it’s important that (Roe v. Wade) remain legal for medical reasons and other reasons.
Laura Bush
There is nothing political about American literature.
Laura Bush
...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.
Abigail Adams
Freedom makes a huge requirement of every human being. With freedom comes responsibility. For the person who is unwilling to grow up, the person who does not want to carry his own weight, this is a frightening prospect.
Eleanor Roosevelt
Anyone who thinks must think of the next war as they would of suicide.
Eleanor Roosevelt
War is not nice.
Barbara Bush
Lest I keep my complacent way I must remember somewhere out there a person died for me today. As long as there must be war, I ask and I must answer was I worth dying for?
Eleanor Roosevelt
No one won the last war, and no one will win the next war.
Eleanor Roosevelt
There is a growing wave in this country of fear, and of intolerance which springs from fear. Sometimes it is a religious intolerance, sometimes it is a racial intolerance, but all intolerance grows from the same roots.
Eleanor Roosevelt
These Souls with great Material Possessions were allowed this because of Past Good Works in their Previous Life, but now feel there is no need for Spiritual Progress. They are too easily forgetting why they were granted this Material Wealth in the first place. Therefore we must stop them from accumulating more Material Gains to Guide them back to the right path.
Mary Todd Lincoln
You have to accept whatever comes, and the only important thing is that you meet it with the best you have to give.
Eleanor Roosevelt
As important as your obligations as a doctor, lawyer or business leader will be, you are a human being first. And these human connections with spouse, with children and with friends are the most important investments you will ever make. At the end of your life, you will never regret not having passed one more test, not winning one more verdict, or closing one more deal. You will regret time not spent with a husband, a friend, a child or a parent. One thing will never change. Fathers and Mothers, if you have children, they must come first. You must read to your children, you must hug your children and you must love your children…. Your success as a family, our success as a society depends not what happens at the White House, but what happens inside YOUR house.
Barbara Bush
Libraries allow children to ask questions about the world and find the answers. And the wonderful thing is that once a child learns to use a library, the doors to learning are always open.
Laura Bush