Eleanor Roosevelt Quotes
Will people ever be wise enough to refuse to follow bad leaders or to take away the freedom of other people?
Eleanor Roosevelt, 1884-1962, First Lady (Franklin Delano Roosevelt), U. S. Delegate to the United Nations, My Day, October 16, 1939
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
With so many revolutionary rulers of new nations suppressing all opposition, the history of Ataturk and Turkey is unique. Ataturk was so popular and his People’s Party so successful that there was no opposition and Turkey had one party rule. However, Ataturk was determined to have Turkey become a parliamentary democracy as good as the Western nations of Europe. So a tradition of multi-party democracy was needed. So Ataturk actually went to his friend Fethi Okyar and asked him to start an opposition party and oppose the government. Fethi was a strong supporter of the revolution and generally was in concurrence with Ataturk and the People’s Party on everything. Ataturk however convinced him that they had to start a tradition that would take Turkey through the future, and he did create a new party-- Serbest Cumhuriyet Fırkası (Liberal Republican Party) and worked hard to find differences with the People’s Party and the Government. One immediate contribution was the oversight that the new party provided—a strong tradition that exists to this day in Turkey.
This is a very important quotation because it illustrates a characteristic of most South American (and many other world) cultures. Namely, that respect and dignity are more important than freedom. There is even a Spanish term conveying the importance of respect: Respecto! This is very different from the Anglo-American tradition where if one has freedom, he is little concerned with what others think of him, and no amount of respect would offset the loss of freedom. The person who is free, has the dignity that he needs. The importance of respect over freedom was also a major characteristic of European Fascism in the 1930s.
Anna Eleanor Roosevelt was an American political figure, diplomat and activist. She served as the First Lady of the United States from March 4, 1933, to April 12, 1945, during her husband President Franklin D. Roosevelt's four terms in office, making her the longest-serving First Lady of the United States. Roosevelt served as United States Delegate to the United Nations General Assembly from 1945 to 1952. President Harry S. Truman later called her the "First Lady of the World" in tribute to her human rights achievements.
