Speeches by Eleanor Roosevelt
Feb 23, 2009
"The day for which the people of the world have prayed is here at last. There is great thankfulness in our hearts. Peace has not come, however, as the result of the kind of power which we have known in the past, but as the result of a new discovery which as yet is not fully understood, nor even developed..."
Sep 28, 1948
"I have come this evening to talk with you on one of the greatest issues of our time—that is the preservation of human freedom..."
Oct 16, 1943
"We have a great responsibility here in the United States because we offer the best example that exists perhaps today throughout the world, of the fact that if different races know each other they may live peacefully together..."
Dec 7, 1941
"Good evening, ladies and gentlemen, I am speaking to you tonight at a very serious moment in our history. The Cabinet is convening and the leaders in Congress are meeting with the President. The State Department and Army and Navy officials have been with the President all afternoon. In fact, the Japanese ambassador was talking to the president at the very time that Japan's airships were bombing our citizens in Hawaii and the Philippines and sinking one of our transports loaded with lumber on its way to Hawaii..."
Sep 27, 1934
"I think that we all of us now are conscious of the fact that the appreciation of beauty is something which is of vital importance to us, but we are also conscious of the fact that we are a young country, and we are a country that has not had assurance always in its own taste..."
Feb 8, 1934
"I do not feel that I have to discuss the merits of old age pensions with my audience. We have come beyond that because it is many years now since we have accepted the fact, I think, pretty well throughout the country, that it is the right of old people when they have worked hard all their lives, and, through no fault of theirs, have not been able to provide for their old age, to be cared for in the last years of their life..."