Quotes from No Ordinary Time: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt: The Home Front in World War II

Doris Kearns Goodwin ·  759 pages

Rating: (33K votes)


“We do not have to become heroes overnight,” Eleanor once wrote. “Just a step at a time, meeting each thing that comes up, seeing it is not as dreadful as it appears, discovering that we have the strength to stare it down.”
― Doris Kearns Goodwin, quote from No Ordinary Time: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt: The Home Front in World War II


“She feared that she would become a slave to superficial, symbolic duties.”
― Doris Kearns Goodwin, quote from No Ordinary Time: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt: The Home Front in World War II


“If I wasn't busy," she replied, "I'd go crazy.”
― Doris Kearns Goodwin, quote from No Ordinary Time: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt: The Home Front in World War II


“The domestic scene,” she admitted, referring not only to the coal dispute but to a rash of racial disturbances that had recently broken out, “is anything but encouraging and one would like not to think about it, because it gives one a feeling that, as a whole, we are not really prepared for democracy.”
― Doris Kearns Goodwin, quote from No Ordinary Time: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt: The Home Front in World War II


“FDR, even weakened and near the end of his life, opted to allow disabled veterans to see his true condition. This allowed them to understand the life which could still be before them.”
― Doris Kearns Goodwin, quote from No Ordinary Time: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt: The Home Front in World War II



“The same magazines which not long before advertised products which would quickly allow women to return to their war work now extolled elaborate recipes which women could attempt if they stayed home and vacated jobs for men.”
― Doris Kearns Goodwin, quote from No Ordinary Time: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt: The Home Front in World War II


“The habit of mobility had become ingrained.”
― Doris Kearns Goodwin, quote from No Ordinary Time: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt: The Home Front in World War II


“Spring had come to Washington. The cherry blossoms were in bloom. Yet the glacial mood of the capital refused to melt. Accusations”
― Doris Kearns Goodwin, quote from No Ordinary Time: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt: The Home Front in World War II


“If he could not go out into the world, the world could come to him.”
― Doris Kearns Goodwin, quote from No Ordinary Time: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt: The Home Front in World War II


“The author writes that key FDR aide Harry Hopkins was in such poor health near the end of his boss's second term that one observer said he didn't know how Hopkins could possibly report to the president. But, at the onset of war and genuine national emergency, Hopkins was animated with a new sense of purpose.”
― Doris Kearns Goodwin, quote from No Ordinary Time: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt: The Home Front in World War II



“We should constantly be reminded of what we owe in return for what we have.”
― Doris Kearns Goodwin, quote from No Ordinary Time: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt: The Home Front in World War II


“Through the last days of May and the early days of June, Eleanor”
― Doris Kearns Goodwin, quote from No Ordinary Time: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt: The Home Front in World War II


“Nothing so extraordinary has ever happened in American politics,” a dazed Harold Ickes wrote. “Here was a man—a Democrat until a couple of years ago—who, without any organization went into a Republican National Convention and ran away with the nomination for President . ”
― Doris Kearns Goodwin, quote from No Ordinary Time: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt: The Home Front in World War II


“Eleanor had defended over the years, that the money spent on arms would be much better spent on education and medical care.”
― Doris Kearns Goodwin, quote from No Ordinary Time: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt: The Home Front in World War II


“On the morning of June 20, at a hastily arranged conference at New York’s Gramercy Park Hotel, a new umbrella organization was born with Eleanor as honorary chair—the U.S. Committee for the Care of European Children. The purpose of the new committee was to coordinate all the different agencies and resources available in the United States for the care of refugee children.”
― Doris Kearns Goodwin, quote from No Ordinary Time: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt: The Home Front in World War II



About the author

Doris Kearns Goodwin
Born place: in Brooklyn, New York, The United States
Born date January 4, 1943
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