Eleanor Roosevelt Quotes

Those who never retract their opinions, love themselves more than they love truth.

To have doubted one's own first principles is the mark of a civilized man.

I think the thing to remember, though, the next time you hear someone who is really certain that he is on the side of the angels, is that the idea of angels was created by human beings, who are famous for being frequently untrustworthy and occasional.

The matter does not appear to me now as it has appears to have appeared to me then.

His opinions are like water in the bottom of a canoe, going from side to side.

I am often of one opinion when I am lying down and of another when I am standing up.

Circumstantial evidence is a very tricky thing. It may seem to point very straight to one thing, but if you shift your own point of view a little, you may find it pointing in an equally uncompromising manner to something entirely different.

Men cannot go straight forward, but must regard the obstacles which impede their course. Inconsistency consists in a change of conduct when there is no change in circumstances which justify it.

In science it often happens that scientists say, 'You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken,' and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion

Only stupid people don't change their minds.

A man who has made up his mind on a given subject twenty-five years ago and continues to hold his political opinions after he has been proved to be wrong is a man of principle; while he who from time to time adapts his opinions to the changing circumstances of life is an opportunist.

I would like to say to the diligent reader of my writings and to others who are interested in them that I am not at all concerned with appearing to be consistent. In my search after Truth I have discarded many ideas and learnt many new things. Old as I am in age, I have no feeling that I have ceased to grow inwardly or that my growth will stop at the dissolution of the flesh. What I am concerned with is my readiness to obey the call of Truth, my God, from moment to moment, and, therefore, when anybody finds any inconsistency between any two writings of mine, if he has still faith in my sanity, he would do well to choose the later of the two on the same subject.

The only consistent people are the dead

A man’s mind is hidden in his writings: criticism brings it to light.

There is nothing that one can say about acting, writing, producing or directing that cannot be revoked in the next breath. Nothing is immutable. The logic of one year is a folly of the next.

What was once obvious to them was no longer quite as obvious. Why was it that humans lost sight of truth so quickly?

The high-school English teacher will be fulfilling his responsibility if he furnishes the student a guided opportunity, through the best writing of the past, to come, in time, to an understanding of the best writing of the present. He will teach literature, not social studies or little lessons in democracy or the customs of many lands. And if the student finds that this is not to his taste? Well, that is regrettable. Most regrettable. His taste should not be consulted; it is being formed.

A student comes to me with a piece of writing, holds it out, says, 'Is this good?' A whole sequence of emergencies goes off in my mind. That's not a question to ask anyone but yourself.

I never write with any kind of message, and I don't think that this book, 'Goodbye, Stranger' has a message in the capital M form of the word but I do hope it makes people ask themselves questions about what they think.

The only truly consistent are the dead.

They are perfect; how else?-they shall never change: We are faulty; why not?-we have time in store.

We have to look at the figures of speech a writer uses, his images and symbols, to realize that underneath all the complexity of human life that uneasy stare at an alien nature is still haunting us, and the problem of surmounting it still with us.

The truth and regularity of a character is not, in justice, to be looked upon as broken, from any one single act or omission which may seem a contradiction to it:Mthe best of men appear sometimes to be strange compounds of contradictory qualities.

Mankind is ever the same, and nothing lost out of nature, though everything is altered.

Don't take anyone's writing advice too seriously.