Dale Carnegie printed the line in How to Stop Worrying and Start Living (Simon and Schuster, 1948), introducing it with “I once asked Eleanor Roosevelt how she handled unjust criticism” and closing “That is her advice.” The popular version stops halfway: she went on to say “You’ll be damned if you do, and damned if you don’t” — a stock American idiom she was repeating, not coining.
“Do what you feel in your heart to be right, for you'll be criticized anyway” Eleanor Roosevelt, quoted by Dale Carnegie in "How to Stop Worrying and Start Living" (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1948), pt. 6, ch. 21: "Do what you feel in your heart to be right — for you'll be criticized anyway. You'll be damned if you do, and damned if you don't."
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In context
Evoking the world of Eleanor Roosevelt — First Lady of the United States and UN human-rights delegate. Theme: "Do what you feel in your heart to be right, for you'll be criticized anyway". Atmospheric and restrained, cinematic directional light, a muted period-appropriate palette, fine grain and texture. Compose with generous empty space for the quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.
Minimalist
Minimalist editorial slide for the quote "Do what you feel in your heart to be right, for you'll be criticized anyway". Clean background, a single muted accent color, generous negative space, subtle paper or linen texture, no literal illustration — let the words carry it. Reserve clear space for a serif quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.
Provenance
Where the line was actually printed
Spoken to
Dale Carnegie, in an interview he recounts in the first person
Printed in
How to Stop Worrying and Start Living
First published
1948 · Simon and Schuster, New York
Location
Part Six, ch. 21, “Do This — and Criticism Can’t Hurt You” (p. 191 in the World’s Work UK edition scanned by the Internet Archive)
She told me that the only way we can avoid all criticism is to be like a Dresden-china figure and stay on a shelf. “Do what you feel in your heart to be right — for you’ll be criticised, anyway. You’ll be damned if you do, and damned if you don’t.” That is her advice.
Ch. 21 — the Eleanor Roosevelt passage
Transcribed from a British edition, which spells it “criticised”; US printings read “criticized.” The narrator is Carnegie — “She told me” and “That is her advice” are his words framing hers.
Carnegie sets the scene himself: “I once asked Eleanor Roosevelt how she handled unjust criticism.” She answers with the Dresden-china image, then the quotation, and he signs it off — “That is her advice.” The passage sits in Part Six, “How to Keep from Worrying about Criticism,” ch. 21, in the Internet Archive’s full-text scan ↗.
Wikiquote ↗ carries the line in its main sourced Quotes section with the same citation — “As quoted in How to Stop Worrying and Start Living (1944; 1948) by Dale Carnegie” — and adds that Roosevelt was repeating an existing expression rather than originating it.
Roosevelt used the same two images in her own essay “How to Take Criticism” ↗, published by the Eleanor Roosevelt Papers Project: she weighs becoming “a Dresden china figure, daintily placed on the mantelpiece,” and concludes, “In these situations you’re damned if you do and damned if you don’t!” That independent echo is the strongest corroboration that Carnegie transcribed her accurately.
The idiom she borrowed was already more than a century old. Word Histories ↗ finds “you’ll be damned if you do, you’ll be damned if you don’t” in a letter printed in the Alexandria Gazette on 20 February 1817, and also records the often-cited passage in Lorenzo Dow’s Reflections on the Love of God (1836).
The words are Eleanor Roosevelt’s, but the published text that carries them is Carnegie’s: How to Stop Worrying and Start Living was first published in 1948 by Simon and Schuster ↗, which puts it well inside US copyright and outside the public domain. Quote the sentence with attribution; don’t reproduce the surrounding chapter.
Rights status is our research, not legal advice — and copyright varies by country and edition. For commercial or published use, confirm with the rightsholder. See terms.
Fact-check
What gets garbled
This one is unusual for a famous-name quote: the attribution is right. What travels wrong is the wording, and the assumption that everything in it started with her.
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Coining “damned if you do, and damned if you don’t”Eleanor Roosevelt Not hers
She was quoting a stock American idiom, not minting one. Wikiquote ↗ flags exactly this, noting she is sometimes credited with originating the expression and pointing to evangelist Lorenzo Dow in 1836. Word Histories ↗ pushes the documented record back further still, to an Alexandria Gazette letter of 20 February 1817.
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The advice she was passing onAnna “Bamie” Roosevelt Cowles Her aunt
Carnegie’s story starts a generation earlier: a shy young Eleanor asks her aunt for advice and is told, “Never be bothered by what people say, as long as you know in your heart you are right.” Roosevelt credits the same aunt in her own essay, naming her as “my aunt, Mrs. William Sheffield Cowles … President Theodore Roosevelt’s sister,” and giving her words as “Do not be bothered by what people say as long as you are sure that you are doing what seems right to you, but be sure that you face yourself honestly” (Eleanor Roosevelt Papers Project ↗). Anna Roosevelt Cowles (1855–1931 ↗) was Theodore Roosevelt’s elder sister and the aunt the family’s young people went to for counsel.
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The half-quoteQuote aggregators Truncated
Poster and calendar versions usually stop at “criticized anyway,” which quietly removes the sentence showing she was leaning on a familiar saying. The full wording recorded at Wikiquote ↗ runs on: “You’ll be damned if you do, and damned if you don’t.”
Carnegie asked the question because Roosevelt was, by his own description, a woman with more ardent friends and more violent enemies than any other who had lived in the White House. Twelve years as First Lady, a daily syndicated column, and a habit of showing up where a president’s wife was not expected had made her one of the most criticized public figures in the country. The line is not motivational-poster philosophy; it is the working rule of someone who had already decided the criticism was coming either way.
The tell is the Dresden-china figure. In her essay “How to Take Criticism” she lays out the same choice at length — be a porcelain ornament “daintily placed on the mantelpiece” and stay unblamed, or act and be blamed — and reaches the same verdict: people who do get damned, and the people who refuse to do get damned too. Carnegie’s interview caught the compressed version.
The only way we can avoid all criticism is to be like a Dresden-china figure and stay on a shelf.
The advice behind the advice
Roosevelt attributed the underlying principle to her aunt Anna Roosevelt Cowles — “Auntie Bye” — Theodore Roosevelt’s elder sister, whom she had gone to as a girl, afraid of being criticized for something she wanted to do. Carnegie reports that the answer became her “Rock of Gibraltar” years later in the White House.
One clause in the essay reads like a footnote to the whole quotation: “In the last analysis you have to be friends with yourself twenty-four hours of the day.” That is the test the famous sentence points at — not indifference to what people think, but a tiebreaker for when their opinions cancel out.
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Filed under
More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.
1884–1962 · First Lady of the United States and UN human-rights delegate
Eleanor Roosevelt was First Lady of the United States from 1933 to 1945, the longest tenure in the role, and redefined it by holding press conferences, travelling to war zones, and writing a daily syndicated column, My Day, for more than a quarter of a century. After Franklin Roosevelt's death she served as a US delegate to the United Nations and chaired the Commission on Human Rights, leading the drafting effort behind the Universal Declaration of Human Rights adopted in 1948. She attracted fierce criticism throughout — which is precisely why an interviewer thought to ask her how she handled it.
For writers & researchers
Cite this
Primary source
Dale Carnegie, How to Stop Worrying and Start Living (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1948), pt. 6, chap. 21, “Do This — and Criticism Can’t Hurt You,” quoting Eleanor Roosevelt.
This verification page
Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘Do what you feel in your heart to be right, for you'll be criticized anyway’?” Last verified 7 Aug 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/do-what-you-feel-in-your-heart-to-be-right-for-youll-be/