Eleanor Roosevelt Quotes

You have a lot of optimism when you are young.

I have never been a cynical person.

We're all idealistic when young.

I was very excited about the idea that I could be an idealist, that I could be my age, the eager beaver who had hope in the justice system and the one who gets disappointed just like the audience.

...she moved about in a mental cloud of many-coloured idealities, which eclipsed all sinister contingencies by its brightness.

To be young is the only religion.

It is through the idealism of youth that man catches sight of truth, and in that idealism he possesses a wealth which he must never exchange for anything else.

I really do see the good in people, and I don't want to change that.

Optimist: day-dreamer in his small clothes.

In my ninety-plus years, I have learned a secret. I have learned that when good men and good women face challenges with optimism, things will always work out! Truly, things always work out! Despite how difficult circumstances may look at the moment, those who have faith and move forward with a happy spirit will find that things always work out.

I asked the American people do not give in to the fear. Do not give into the frustration. We can disagree about public policy. We can disagree about it vibrantly, passionately, but we are a hopeful people. And we have every right to be hopeful.

Are there people to aspire to? Can people be strong enough to withstand all of this disillusionment? Maybe the time is right for people to emerge from the easy cynicism and try to get back to a place where we can actually believe in people and trust people to have proper motivations.

The girl had a certain nobleness of imagination, which rendered her a good many services and played her a great many tricks. She spent half her time in thinking of beauty, bravery, magnanimity; she had a fixed determination to regard the world as a place of brightness, of free expansion, of irresistible action, she thought it would be detestable to be afraid or ashamed. She had an infinite hope that she would never do anything wrong. She had resented so strongly, after discovering them, her mere errors of feeling.

I want to see everything. I guess the positive version of not seeing or not knowing would be preservation of fantasy.

Idealists are people who believe in the potential of human nature for transformation. . . . The most essential attribute of human nature is its mutability and freedom from instinct . . . it is always within our power to change our nature. So it is actually the idealists who are on the mark and the realists who are off base.

To young people the future is still long.

Everywhere I go, I see young people: Confident, forward looking. I have seen them in Lagos, in Rwanda, in the suburbs of London.

The way to become happy Is to think And to feel That the very best is yet to come.

I've always felt whatever the opposite of disillusioned is. I guess illusioned with movies and with people in movies and things like that. It's all exciting to me.

Pessimism is reactionary because it makes the very idea of improving the world impossible.

But you have to have hope. You have to be optimistic in order to continue to move forward.

Your father always tries to see the good side of people; to find the excuse. But sometimes there isn't a good side. There isn't an excuse. (Mom - to Lara Lington)

There was the natural human survival instinct to be optimistic.

I feel really good about the future and working with people.

I do the very best I can to look upon life with optimism and hope and looking forward to a better day.