If You Ask Me
by Eleanor Roosevelt

Florence Nightingale is one of the greatest women in history because she contributed a new conception of one of the purposes to which women should dedicate themselves.

I imagine Mme. Curie, because she demonstrated that a woman's brain has as much ability for scientific research as a man's, and that a woman can be as steadfast in purpose and as self-denying in her work, will always be considered great.

Harriet Beecher Stowe, because she had the heart to understand a great social problem and all its implications, and the courage to use her ability as a writer to bring it home to the conscience of the people as a whole, seems to me another great woman.

I have used these three women simply as symbols of the development of new phases in women's experience. I doubt if any human beings, just by themselves, are very important; but when they start a new trend of thought and action, they are apt to symbolize for their contemporaries and for the future a new idea, and therefore they become important.

I do not really know how people who are to be honored by memorials in Washington are chosen. It seems to me, though, that they should be very carefully chosen, and on the whole it would seem wiser to me to honor more people in their own home states rather than in the District of Columbia, which cannot continue indefinitely to find sites for memorials.

We might wish to discourage them, but it would be utterly useless at the present time, so we might as well give in gracefully and try to see that when war games are played they teach the lessons which we wish our children to learn—­fair play, magnanimity in victory, courage in defeat and no hatred of peoples.

As I understand it, to be a Jew is to belong to the Jewish religion; the term has nothing whatever to do with a racial background. If you want to be completely honest, you would naturally say, "I am an American, born in this country. My parents [or grandparents, as the case may be] came from such and such a country. I belong to no religion, but my parents were of the Jewish faith."

I should think one should be allowed to deduct from one's income-tax return all medical expenses which are not covered by insurance.

My greatest fear has always been that I would be afraid—afraid physically or mentally or morally—and allow myself to be influenced by fear instead of by my honest convictions.

I should think that the boys who go through the war, and who believe in what they are doing, would have a respect for a conscientious objector who had an equally strong belief that he should not kill other people.

We have put these conscientious objectors to work in this war. They are clamoring for more dangerous work. Some of them are already doing work which requires great courage, but not the taking of another man's life. It would certainly seem a curious thing to me if a boy were not able to understand, having had deep convictions himself, that other people have a right to equally deep convictions and that they should be respected.

I have never tried to influence the President in any appointment, nor have I ever tried to prevent his doing anything.

I thought that I stated that the small and weaker unions are never very anxious to make public their financial situation, because in publishing the membership list they reveal their weakness; and when they are trying to organize before they are well established, this may give the cue to the employer as to whether they are able to stand up for their rights or not.

I have changed my hair style several times, perhaps not often enough. In any case, when you reach my age, if you can find anything which is moderately becoming, it is better to leave it alone and care less about being in the fashion and more about being inconspicuous!