Franklin D. Roosevelt quotes:

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  • True individual freedom cannot exist without economic security and independence. People who are hungry and out of a job are the stuff of which dictatorships are made.

  • Let us never forget that government is ourselves and not an alien power over us. The ultimate rulers of our democracy are not a President and senators and congressmen and government officials, but the voters of this country.

  • A nation that destroys its soils destroys itself. Forests are the lungs of our land, purifying the air and giving fresh strength to our people.

  • Competition has been shown to be useful up to a certain point and no further, but cooperation, which is the thing we must strive for today, begins where competition leaves off.

  • I think we consider too much the good luck of the early bird and not enough the bad luck of the early worm.

  • Democracy cannot succeed unless those who express their choice are prepared to choose wisely. The real safeguard of democracy, therefore, is education.

  • Happiness lies in the joy of achievement and the thrill of creative effort.

  • Don't forget what I discovered that over ninety percent of all national deficits from 1921 to 1939 were caused by payments for past, present, and future wars.

  • Not only our future economic soundness but the very soundness of our democratic institutions depends on the determination of our government to give employment to idle men.

  • Favor comes because for a brief moment in the great space of human change and progress some general human purpose finds in him a satisfactory embodiment.

  • More than an end to war, we want an end to the beginning of all wars - yes, an end to this brutal, inhuman and thoroughly impractical method of settling the differences between governments.

  • When you reach the end of your rope, tie a knot in it and hang on.

  • We continue to recognize the greater ability of some to earn more than others. But we do assert that the ambition of the individual to obtain for him a proper security is an ambition to be preferred to the appetite for great wealth and great power.

  • It is an unfortunate human failing that a full pocketbook often groans more loudly than an empty stomach.

  • We have always held to the hope, the belief, the conviction that there is a better life, a better world, beyond the horizon.

  • There is a mysterious cycle in human events. To some generations much is given. Of other generations much is expected. This generation of Americans has a rendezvous with destiny.

  • The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.

  • Whoever seeks to set one religion against another seeks to destroy all religion.

  • No group and no government can properly prescribe precisely what should constitute the body of knowledge with which true education is concerned.

  • I do not look upon these United States as a finished product. We are still in the making.

  • Rules are not necessarily sacred, principles are.

  • Physical strength can never permanently withstand the impact of spiritual force.

  • The overwhelming majority of Americans are possessed of two great qualities a sense of humor and a sense of proportion.

  • Put two or three men in positions of conflicting authority. This will force them to work at loggerheads, allowing you to be the ultimate arbiter.

  • It takes a long time to bring the past up to the present.

  • Our national determination to keep free of foreign wars and foreign entanglements cannot prevent us from feeling deep concern when ideals and principles that we have cherished are challenged.

  • Art is not a treasure in the past or an importation from another land, but part of the present life of all living and creating peoples.

  • The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much it is whether we provide enough for those who have little.

  • There are as many opinions as there are experts.

  • The point in history at which we stand is full of promise and danger. The world will either move forward toward unity and widely shared prosperity - or it will move apart.

  • But while they prate of economic laws, men and women are starving. We must lay hold of the fact that economic laws are not made by nature. They are made by human beings.

  • If you treat people right they will treat you right... ninety percent of the time.

  • It isn't sufficient just to want - you've got to ask yourself what you are going to do to get the things you want.

  • Those newspapers of the nation which most loudly cried dictatorship against me would have been the first to justify the beginnings of dictatorship by somebody else.

  • The only sure bulwark of continuing liberty is a government strong enough to protect the interests of the people, and a people strong enough and well enough informed to maintain its sovereign control over the goverment.

  • Human kindness has never weakened the stamina or softened the fiber of a free people. A nation does not have to be cruel to be tough.

  • In our personal ambitions we are individualists. But in our seeking for economic and political progress as a nation, we all go up or else all go down as one people.

  • It is the duty of the President to propose and it is the privilege of the Congress to dispose.

  • Prosperous farmers mean more employment, more prosperity for the workers and the business men of every industrial area in the whole country.

  • Self-interest is the enemy of all true affection.

  • The virtues are lost in self-interest as rivers are lost in the sea.

  • I am neither bitter nor cynical but I do wish there was less immaturity in political thinking.

  • Take a method and try it. If it fails, admit it frankly, and try another. But by all means, try something.

  • There are many ways of going forward, but only one way of standing still.

  • War is young men dying and old men talking

  • We cannot always build the future for our youth, but we can build our youth for the future.

  • The school is the last expenditure upon which America should be willing to economize.

  • Wise and prudent men and intelligent conservatives have long known that in a changing world worthy institutions can be conserved only by adjusting them to the changing time.

  • Older men declare war. But it is youth that must fight and die. And it is youth who must inherit the tribulation, the sorrow and the triumphs that are the aftermath of war.

  • Yesterday, December seventh, 1941, a date which will live in infamy, the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan. We will gain the inevitable triumph, so help us God.

  • I fearthat both dictators [Hitler and Mussolini] think their present methods are succeeding because of the gains they have made in Albania, Hungary and Yugoslavia.

  • If civilization is to survive, we must cultivate the science of human relationships - the ability of all peoples, of all kinds, to live together, in the same world at peace.

  • Almighty God, who hast given us this good land for our heritage; We humbly beseech Thee that we may always prove ourselves a people mindful of Thy favor and glad to do Thy will.

  • Almighty God: Our sons, pride of our Nation, this day have set upon a mighty endeavor, a struggle to preserve our Republic, our religion, and our civilization, and to set free a suffering humanity.

  • We must especially beware of that small group of selfish men who would clip the wings of the American Eagle in order to feather their own nests.

  • The principle on which this country was founded and by which it has always been governed is that Americanism is a matter of the mind and heart; Americanism is not, and never was, a matter of race or ancestry.

  • The essential qualities of a true Pan Americanism must be the same as those which constitute a good neighbor; namely, mutual understanding, and through such understanding, a sympathetic appeciation of the other's point of view. It is only in this manner that we can hope to build up a system of which confidence, friendship, and good will are the cornerstones...

  • The real truth of the matter is, as you and I know, that a financial element in the large centers has owned the government of the U.S. since the days of Andrew Jackson.

  • That is the spiral galaxy in Andromeda. It is as large as our Milky Way. It is one of a hundred million galaxies. It consists of one hundred billion suns. Now I think we are small enough.

  • Beware of that profound enemy of the free enterprise system who pays lip-service to free competition, but also labels every antitrust prosecution as a persecution.

  • "Appeasement" is the policy of feeding your friends to a crocodile, one at a time, in hopes that the crocodile will eat you last.

  • No man can tame a tiger into a kitten by stroking it. There can be no appeasement with ruthlessness. There can be no reasoning with an incendiary bomb.

  • Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the assessment that something else is more important than fear.

  • They realize that in thirty-four months we have built up new instruments of public power. In the hands of a peoples Government this power is wholesome and proper. But in the hands of political puppets of an economic autocracy such power would provide shackles for the liberties of the people.

  • All Government employees should realize that the process of collective bargaining, as usually understood, cannot be transplanted into the public service,

  • Books can not be killed by fire. People die, but books never die. No man and no force can abolish memory... In this war, we know, books are weapons. And it is a part of your dedication always to make them weapons for man's freedom.

  • Be sincere; be brief; be seated.

  • Calm seas never made a good sailor

  • Peace, like charity, begins at home.

  • A serf-supporting and self-respecting democracy can plead no justification for the existence of child labor, no economic reason for chiseling workers' wages or stretching workers' hours.

  • We may not be able to prepare the future for our children, but we can at least prepare our children for the future.

  • Government cannot close its eyes to the pollution of waters, to the erosion of soil, to the slashing of forests any more than it can close its eyes to the need for slum clearance and schools.

  • I'm not the smartest fellow in the world, but I can sure pick smart colleagues.

  • A conservative is a man with two perfectly good legs who, however, has never learned how to walk forward.

  • In politics, nothing happens by accident. If it happens, you can bet it was planned that way.

  • The United States Constitution has proved itself the most marvelously elastic compilation of rules of government ever written.

  • We are trying to construct a more inclusive society. We are going to make a country in which no one is left out.

  • The handling of our forests as a continuous, renewable resource means permanent employment and stability to our country life. The forests are also needed for mitigating extreme climatic fluctuations, holding the soil on the slopes, retaining the moisture in the ground, and controlling the equable flow of water in our streams.

  • When you see a rattlesnake poised to strike, you do not wait until he has struck to crush him.

  • The hand that held the dagger has struck it into the back of its neighbor.

  • (Mariners) have written one of its most brilliant chapters. They have delivered the goods when and where needed in every theater of operations and across every ocean in the biggest, the most difficult and dangerous job ever undertaken. As time goes on, there will be greater public understanding of our merchant's fleet record during this war.

  • I pledge you, I pledge myself, to a new deal for the American people.

  • December 7, 1941. A date which will live in infamy.

  • I am a Christian and a Democrat, that's all.

  • The Democratic Party will live and continue to receive the support of the majority of Americans just so long as it remains a liberal party.

  • No country, however rich, can afford the waste of its human resources. Demoralization caused by vast unemployment is our greatest extravagance. Morally, it is the greatest menace to our social order.

  • These are bad days for all of us who remember always that when real world forces come into conflict, the final result is never as dark as we mortals guess it in very difficult days.

  • The only limit to our realization of tomorrow will be our doubts of today.

  • It was natural and perhaps human that the privileged princes of these new economic dynasties, thirsting for power, reached out for control over government itself. They created a new despotism and wrapped it in the robes of legal sanction. ...And as a result the average man once more confronts the problem that faced the Minute Man....

  • The Social Security Act offers to all our citizens a workable and working method of meeting urgent present needs and of forestalling future need. It utilizes the familiar machinery of our Federal-State government to promote the common welfare and the economic stability of the Nation.

  • The constant free flow of communication amount us-enabling the free interchange of ideas-forms the very bloodstream of our nation. It keeps the mind and body of our democracy eternally vital, eternally young.

  • The fundamental idea...is that the country belongs to the people, that it is in process of making for the enrichment of the lives of all of us.

  • We know that equality of individual ability has never existed and never will, but we do insist that equality of opportunity still must be sought.

  • Real estate cannot be lost or stolen, nor can it be carried away. Purchased with common sense, paid for in full, and managed with reasonable care, it is about the safest investment in the world.

  • How many people in the United States do you think will be willing to go to war to free Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania?

  • The country needs and, unless I mistake its temper, the country demands bold, persistent experimentation .

  • The country needs and, unless I mistake its temper, the country demands bold, persistent experimentation. It is common sense to take a method and try it; if it fails, admit it frankly and try another. But above all, try something. The millions who are in want will not stand by silently forever while the things to satisfy their needs are within easy reach.

  • Remember you are just an extra in everyone else's play.

  • I am perhaps being a bit facetious but if some of my good Baptist brethren in Georgia had done a little preaching from the pulpitagainst the K.K.K. in the '20s, I would have a little more genuine American respect for their Christianity!

  • If I went to work in a factory the first thing I'd do is join a union.

  • Where freedom of religion has been attacked, the attack has come from sources opposed to democracy. Where democracy has been overthrown, the spirit of free worship has disappeared. And where religion and democracy have vanished, good faith and reason in international affairs have given way to strident ambition and brute force.

  • Confidence... thrives on honesty, on honor, on the sacredness of obligations, on faithful protection and on unselfish performance. Without them it cannot live.

  • To return to higher standards of living we must abandon the false prophets and seek new leaders of our own choosing.

  • I consider it a public duty to answer falsifications with facts. I will not pretend that I find this an unpleasant duty. I am an old campaigner, and I love a good fight.

  • The liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerated the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than the democratic state itself. That in its essence is fascism: ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or any controlling private power.

  • That, in essence is Fascism - ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any controlling private power.

  • Men are not prisoners of fate, but only prisoners of their own minds.

  • First of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself - nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.

  • This great nation will endure as it has endured, will revive and will prosper. So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.

  • Too often in recent history liberal governments have been wrecked on rocks of loose fiscal policy.

  • A good leader can't get too far ahead of his followers.

  • Those who have long enjoyed such privileges as we enjoy forget in time that men have died to win them." - Franklin D. Roosevelt

  • A world turned into a stereotype, a society converted into a regiment, a life translated into a routine, make it difficult for either art or artists to survive. Crush individuality in society and you crush art as well. Nourish the conditions of a free life and you nourish the arts, too.

  • We are a nation of many nationalities, many races, many religions-bound together by a single unity, the unity of freedom and equality. Whoever seeks to set one nationality against another, seeks to degrade all nationalities.

  • We look forward to a world founded upon four essential human freedoms. The first is freedom of speech and expression. The second is freedom of every person to worship God in his own way. The third is freedom from want. The fourth is freedom from fear.

  • We must recognize the fundamental rights of man. There can be no true national life in our democracy unless we give unqualified recognition to freedom of religious worship and freedom of education.

  • The only thing we have to fear...is audiovisual glitches at our annual event.

  • There is nothing I love as much as a good fight.

  • In the field of world policy; I would dedicate this nation to the policy of the good neighbor.

  • On the European Front the most important development of the past year has been the crushing offensive of the Great Armies of Russia...

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