Eleanor Roosevelt — Profile, Rankings & Fame Trend

Summary

Updated 2026-06-21

She turned first lady into a public force—press conferences, a daily column, a radio show—then spent the second act writing the world's first attempt at universal human rights, a document adopted by the UN in 1948 to a standing ovation.

Biography

About

Anna Eleanor Roosevelt was born October 11, 1884, into the prominent Roosevelt and Livingston families, a niece of Theodore Roosevelt, but her childhood was marked by the deaths of both parents and a brother. At 15 she studied at Allenswood Boarding Academy in London under the formative influence of its director Marie Souvestre. She married her fifth cousin once removed, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, in 1905 and bore six children between 1906 and 1916, one dying in infancy. The marriage fractured in 1918 when she discovered Franklin's affair with her social secretary, Lucy Mercer; after mediation…

Voice

In their own words

Sourced, dated quotes from Eleanor Roosevelt

Eleanor Roosevelt

saidDec 1960

Life was meant to be lived, and curiosity must be kept alive. One must never, for whatever reason, turn his back on life.

— Preface (December 1960) to The Autobiography of Eleanor Roosevelt (1961), p. xix

Eleanor Roosevelt

said1960

We have to face the fact that either all of us are going to die together or we are going to learn to live together and if we are to live together we have to talk.

— The New York Times (1960), as cited in The Beacon Book of Quotations by Women (1992) by Rosalie Maggio, p. 156

Eleanor Roosevelt

said11 Nov 1951