Politics & Power Quote by Eleanor Roosevelt

Eleanor Roosevelt is calling out a habit that still defines democratic life: the preference for safe, agreeable language over accountable commitments. The line is framed as a genuine question, but it functions like a rebuke. By saying "grow up", she turns political vagueness into a kind of arrested development: not merely strategic, but immature. It’s a sharp reversal of how politicians like to present themselves as steady and statesmanlike. Here, steadiness is code for evasiveness.

The core target is the "generalities to which everyone can subscribe" - a phrase that exposes consensus as performance. Roosevelt isn’t condemning compromise; she’s condemning slogans that simulate unity while dodging the hard work of choosing. "Definite things which mean something" demands policy with edges: specifics that create winners and losers, that can be measured, criticized, and revised. In other words, language that incurs political risk.

The subtext is moral and democratic. A public can’t truly deliberate if it’s fed statements engineered to be unfalsifiable. Everyone can cheer; no one can hold power to account. Coming from a First Lady who pushed beyond ceremonial expectations - especially in the New Deal era and later as a human rights advocate - the frustration lands as insider testimony. She’s seen how institutions protect themselves with fog.

It also reads as a warning about political adulthood itself: democracy doesn’t collapse only from bad ideas. It withers from the constant substitution of comforting words for meaningful decisions.