On Eleanor:
Who says you can't be defined by what people say about you?
A new
force appeared in the world. . .a woman who accepted a personal responsibility for her 
country and her time–a citizen who
took self government personally and seriously and would not rest
until she had done what she felt she had to do." -Archibald
Macleish, American poet (Eleanor55)
"Her great contribution was her
persistence in carrying into practice her deep belief in liberty
and equality. She would not accept that anyone should
suffer–because they were women, or children, or foreign, or
poor, or stateless refugees. Jean Monnet (13)
"To
the end of her life, her own 'very miserable childhood,' her
wanting to be loved, especially by her father, gave her a
profound sense of kinship with all lonely, deprived, and excluded youngsters." -Joseph P. Lash (19)
"She did not believe that there was
any job, in any phase of life, that a woman could not do as well
as, or better than, any man." -Elliot Roosevelt (58).
"No
woman has done more for this country and for women in particular
than my mother." -James Roosevelt (72)
"Eleanor Roosevelt changed forever
the role of political wifes in the Unite States." -Helen
Jackson (77)
"She
was the most famous woman of her time. But even that description
hardly begins to encompass the extent of the affection and
admiration that she stirred throughout the world." -The New
York Herald Tribune (87)
"Just before Pearl Harbor, when
Mrs. Roosevelt invited me to come to Washington to help in the
Office of Civilian Defense, she was under terrible attacks from
many sides. I have never forgotten how she met friend and foe
alike, apparently unperturbed by what people had said or done to
her personally." -Justine Wise Polier (93)
"Mrs.
Roosevelt bring to the Commission [on Human Rights] dignity,
patience, prestige, breadth of understanding, genuine zest for
the fundamental freedoms, and a revered name that is now
historically associated throughout the world with the cause of
human rights." -Charles Malik. president of UN Economic and
Social Council (98)
"Mrs. Roosevelt was one of the
great human beings of our time. She stood for peace and
international understanding not only as intellectual propositions
but as a way of life."
-Henry Kissinger (100)
"In
her last years, no man laughed at her. All men saw in her the
very, finest that exists in the American grain: sometimes right,
sometimes mistaken, sometimes confused, but full of courage and
vitality to the last." -Robert Wallac, Journalist (106)
Quotes courtesy of Eleanor Roosevelt, Karen McAuley, Chelsea House Publishers, NY, 1987.
