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Quotes by First-lady
"Well, Warren Harding, I have got you the presidency. What are you going to do with it?"
13
"Do not put such unlimited power into the hands of husbands. Remember all men would be tyrants if they could."
13
"The independent girl is truly of quite modern origin, and usually is a most bewitching little piece of humanity."
13
"I'm no different from anybody else. If I don't have a card, I can't check out these books."
13
"At the end of your life, you will never regret not having passed one more test, not winning one more verdict or not closing one more deal. You will regret time not spent with a husband, a friend, a child, or a parent."
13
"Now about those ghosts. I'm sure they're here and I'm not half so alarmed at meeting up with any of them as I am at having to meet the live nuts I have to see every day."
13
"You have to have been a Republican to know how good it is to be a Democrat."
13
"He didn't even have the satisfaction of being killed for civil rights. it had to be some silly little Communist."
13
"It isn't enough to talk about peace. One must believe in it. And it isn't enough to believe in it. One must work at it."
13
"It is better to light a candle than curse the darkness."
13
"Arbitrary power is like most other things which are very hard, very liable to be broken."
13
"Probably the happiest period in life most frequently is in middle age, when the eager passions of youth are cooled, and the infirmities of age not yet begun; as we see that the shadows, which are at morning and evening so large, almost entirely disappear at midday."
13
"If particular care and attention is not paid to the ladies, we are determined to foment a rebellion, and will not hold ourselves bound by any laws in which we have no voice, or representation."
13
"All of life is a constant education."
13
"No one can afford not to be a man. No position can compensate for coming face to face with a robot when you are alone."
13
"There are many little ways to enlarge your child's world. Love of books is the best of all."
13
"I think, at a child's birth, if a mother could ask a fairy godmother to endow it with the most useful gift, that gift should be curiosity."
13
"You have to love your children unselfishly. That's hard. But it's the only way."
13
"You can't move so fast that you try to change the mores faster than people can accept it. That doesn't mean you do nothing, but it means that you do the things that need to be done according to priority."
13
"We gain strength, and courage, and confidence by each experience in which we really stop to look fear in the face... we must do that which we think we cannot."
13
"A woman's place in public is to sit beside her husband, be silent, and be sure her hat is on straight."
13
"It is often the people who refuse to assume any responsibility who are apt to be the sharpest critics of those who do."
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"Politics is a people business. I like people."
13
"Success must include two things: the development of an individual to his utmost potentiality and a contribution of some kind to one's world."
13
"I was a Scout years ago, before the movement started, when my father took me fishing, camping and hunting. Then I was sorry that more girls could not have what I had. When I learned of the movement, I thought, here is what I always wanted other girls to have."
12
"The winner of the hoop race will be the first to realize her dream, not society's dream, her own personal dream."
12
"I've learned from experience that the greater part of our happiness or misery depends on our dispositions and not on our circumstances."
12
"There are two kinds of women, those who want power in the world and those who want power in bed."
12
"Friendship with ones self is all important, because without it one cannot be friends with anyone else in the world."
12
"Women in particular need to keep an eye on their physical and mental health, because if we're scurrying to and from appointments and errands, we don't have a lot of time to take care of ourselves. We need to do a better job of putting ourselves higher on our own 'to do' list."
12
"I majored in geology in college but have majored in Herbert Hoover ever since."
12
"Not my power, but the power of the position, a power which could be used to help."
12
"One of the lessons that I grew up with was to always stay true to yourself and never let what somebody else says distract you from your goals. And so when I hear about negative and false attacks, I really don't invest any energy in them, because I know who I am."
12
"I have spent many years of my life in opposition, and I rather like the role."
12
"We have too many high-sounding words, and too few actions that correspond with them."
12
"The First Lady is an unpaid public servant elected by one person - her husband."
12
"My first job in all honesty is going to continue to be mom-in-chief. Making sure that in this transition, which will be even more of a transition for the girls... that they are settled and that they know they will continue to be the center of our universe."
12
"I mean, the part you don't like, I mean, that's the only part. That's the part no one likes, and that is the criticisms, and the unfair criticisms, I might add, of my husband. But that's also just a fact of life in politics."
12
"Lest I keep my complacent way I must remember somewhere out there a person died for me today. As long as there must be war, I ask and I must answer was I worth dying for?"
12
"I've liked lots of people 'til I went on a picnic jaunt with them."
12
"Every time you meet a situation though you think at the time it is an impossibility and you go through the torture of the damned once you have met it and lived through it you find that forever after you are freer than you were before."
12
"It's my feeling that God lends you your children until they're about eighteen years old. If you haven't made your points with them by then, it's too late."
12
"The one thing I do not want to be called is First Lady. It sounds like a saddle horse."
12
"I would never do anything to undermine my husband's point of view."
12
"I don't think there are any men who are faithful to their wives."
12
"And who knows? Somewhere out there in this audience may even be someone who will one day follow my footsteps, and preside over the White House as the president's spouse. I wish him well!"
12
"I am more and more convinced that man is a dangerous creature and that power, whether vested in many or a few, is ever grasping, and like the grave, cries, 'Give, give.'"
11
"I may be the only mother in America who knows exactly what their child is up to all the time."
11
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