"Hate and force cannot be in just a part of the world without having an effect on the rest of it"
About this Quote
The specific intent is political pressure dressed as ethics. As First Lady turned global human-rights operator, Roosevelt understood that Americans liked charity but distrusted entanglement. So she reframes involvement not as altruism, but as self-preservation: you don’t get to quarantine injustice. The subtext is aimed at the complacent listener who thinks decency can be local. “Just a part of the world” is the bait - the familiar temptation to compartmentalize suffering, to treat distant repression as regrettable background noise. Her sentence snaps that logic shut: the rest of “it” will be touched, whether through war, refugees, economic shock, radicalization, or the slow corrosion of norms.
Context sharpens the urgency. Roosevelt helped midwife the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, a document born from the premise that state violence is not merely domestic policy; it is a threat to the international order. Her rhetoric anticipates today’s feedback loops: disinformation, transnational extremism, and the way brutality abroad can license brutality at home. The genius is the minimalism: a global theory of consequences delivered in one clean, unavoidable line.
Quote Details
| Topic | Peace |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
| Cite |
Citation Formats
APA Style (7th ed.)
Roosevelt, Eleanor. (2026, January 18). Hate and force cannot be in just a part of the world without having an effect on the rest of it. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/hate-and-force-cannot-be-in-just-a-part-of-the-16890/
Chicago Style
Roosevelt, Eleanor. "Hate and force cannot be in just a part of the world without having an effect on the rest of it." FixQuotes. January 18, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/hate-and-force-cannot-be-in-just-a-part-of-the-16890/.
MLA Style (9th ed.)
"Hate and force cannot be in just a part of the world without having an effect on the rest of it." FixQuotes, 18 Jan. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/hate-and-force-cannot-be-in-just-a-part-of-the-16890/. Accessed 12 Feb. 2026.








