Eleanor Roosevelt Speeches

[ER coughs] And, if you want to serve your country, you try to find out where you can serve it best, and I think if we have leadership in the White House and the White House begins to tell us what world conditions really are and we begin to face, as a people, the rethinking of many things which have to be rethought in our country because we are no longer able purely to meet our own needs. We will always think of our own interests, but we will have to think of them in the context of world interests. [ER coughs] Now this is something very new to us and you need information, you need knowledge, to really be able to do this. And it cannot be done just by people in Washington. If we are going to be the real leaders of the non-communist world, then we have to be a great people. If we are a great people, we may find that we have a great leader, but no one alone can accomplish this particular job. This is a job which only a leader and a great people can really do successfully and I think that is the whole point that I would like to have you think about because I think, as a nation, we have been somewhat asleep in our comfort because on the whole, we're better off than any nation in the world and it's awfully disagreeable to think about heavy responsibilities and things that are wrong in other areas of the world. We'd much rather go right on the way we are and have a good time in life, but that isn't the way our country was built. Our country was built by people who had imagination, who saw great visions for the future.

I sometimes like to play with the thought of how Thomas Jefferson would have looked at today's period and thought about the future. I think he'd have been thinking of what a great role the United States could build. I think he would have been dreaming again. It was a dream really that brought all the people to our shore. They came for new opportunity, for freedom of religion, from persecution, from lack of ability to earn a decent living, from fear, and they came here, and now we are in a different kind of situation, but I have a feeling that the same people--thank you very much! [pause] But I have a feeling that the architects of our early years would really be enjoying this period because it's a period of great adventure.

I think they would have been dreaming new dreams, of new areas where we could be of service, where we could be leaders to lead mankind to better lives. First, of course, men eat. But then, they are not satisfied by bread alone and if you really understand democracy and teaching, you will give to humans all over the world an inspiration for something more that they can strive for. I think this is what being--facing world leadership means today and I hope that you will go home and think because you are the people who will bring this about. You are the people who will help us to grow ourselves to be great again as we were in our early days and, in doing that, you will make a better world for all the people of the world.