62 quotes
The mobilization of world opinion and methods of negotiation should be developed and used by every nation in order to strengthen the United Nations.
My Day (1935)
Before we can make friends with anyone else, we must first make friends with ourselves.
I think that somehow, we learn who we really are and then live with that decision.
Peter's Quotations : Ideas for Our Time (1972)
You get more joy out of the giving to others, and should put a good deal of thought into the happiness you are able to give.
Laws are only observed with the consent of the individuals concerned and a moral change still depends on the individual and not on the passage of any law.
Happiness is not a goal, it is a by-product. Paradoxically, the one sure way not to be happy is deliberately to map out a way of life in which one would please oneself completely and exclusively.
You Learn by Living (1960)
As long as we are not actually destroyed, we can work to gain greater understanding of other peoples and to try to present to the peoples of the world the values of our own beliefs.
My Day (1935)
If man is to be liberated to enjoy more leisure, he must also be prepared to enjoy this leisure fully and creatively.
My Day (1935)
What we must learn to do is to create unbreakable bonds between the sciences and the humanities. We cannot procrastinate. The world of the future is in our making. Tomorrow is now.
Tomorrow Is Now (1963)
In our country we must trust the people to hear and see both the good and the bad and to choose the good.
My Day (1935)
“Is there anything we can do for you? For you are the one in trouble now.”
The most important thing in any relationship is not what you get but what you give.
This Is My Story (1937)
I think I have a good deal of my Uncle Theodore in me, because I could not, at any age, be content to take my place by the fireside and simply look on.
The Three Roosevelts: Patrician Leaders Who Transformed America (2002)
A mature person is one who does not think only in absolutes, who is able to be objective even when deeply stirred emotionally, who has learned that there is both good and bad in all people and all things, and who walks humbly and deals charitably with the circumstances of life, knowing that in this world no one is all-knowing and therefore all of us need both love and charity.
You Learn by Living (1960)
There is a widespread understanding among the people of this nation, and probably among the people of the world, that there is no safety except through the prevention of war.
My Day (1935)
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.
You Learn by Living (1960)
This freedom of which men speak, for which they fight, seems to some people a perilous thing. It has to be earned at a bitter cost and then — it has to be lived with. For freedom makes a huge requirement of every human being. With freedom comes responsibility.
You Learn by Living (1960)
If the use of leisure time is confined to looking at TV for a few extra hours every day, we will deteriorate as a people. (5 November 1958)
My Day (1935)
I had a rose named after me and I was very flattered. But I was not pleased to read the description in the catalogue: "No good in a bed, but fine against a wall".
We face the future fortified with the lessons we have learned from the past. It is today that we must create the world of the future. Spinoza, I think, pointed out that we ourselves can make experience valuable when, by imagination and reason, we turn it into foresight.
Tomorrow Is Now (1963)