Top 498 Quotes & Sayings by Franklin D. Roosevelt - Page 2

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.

In our seeking for economic and political progress, we all go up - or else we all go down.

We must lay hold of the fact that economic laws are not made by nature. They are made by human beings.

If we can boondoggle ourselves out of this depression, that word is going to be enshrined in the hearts of the American people for years to come.

A reactionary is a somnambulist walking backwards.

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

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.

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.

Here is my principle: Taxes shall be levied according to ability to pay. That is the only American principle.

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

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.

I believe that in every country the people themselves are more peaceably and liberally inclined than their governments.

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

We know now that government by organized money is just as dangerous as government by organized mob.

Presidents are selected, not elected.

Calm seas never made a good sailor

That, in its essence, is Fascism — ownership of Government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power.

In these days of difficulty, we Americans everywhere must and shall choose the path of social justice…, the path of faith, the path of hope, and the path of love toward our fellow man.

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.

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

It is better to swallow words than to have to eat them later.

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.

Never underestimate a man who overestimates himself.

An election cannot give a country a firm sense of direction if it has two or more national parties which merely have different names but are as alike in their principles and aims as peas in the same pod.

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

In my Inaugural I laid down the simple proposition that nobody is going to starve in this country. It seems to me to be equally plain that no business which depends for existence on paying less than living wages to its workers has any right to continue in this country. By "business" I mean the whole of commerce as well as the whole of industry; by workers I mean all workers, the white collar class as well as the men in overalls; and by living wages I mean more than a bare subsistence level - I mean the wages of decent living.

We had to struggle with the old enemies of peace - business and financial monopoly, speculation, reckless banking, class antagonism, sectionalism, war profiteering. They had begun to consider the Government of the United States as a mere appendage to their own affairs. We know now that Government by organized money is just as dangerous as Government by organized mob. Never before in all our history have these forces been so united against one candidate as they stand today. They are unanimous in their hate for me - and I welcome their hatred.

Freedom of conscience, of education, of speech, of assembly are among the very fundamentals of democracy and all of them would be nullified should freedom of the press ever be successfully challenged.

Remember, remember always, that all of us, and you and I especially, are descended from immigrants and revolutionists.

Repetition does not transform a lie into a truth.

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

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.

Freedom of the press is essential to the preservation of a democracy; but there is a difference between freedom and license. Editorialists who tell downright lies in order to advance their own agendas do more to discredit the press than all the censors in the world.

We, and all others who believe in freedom as deeply as we do, would rather die on our feet than live on our knees.

Go for the moon. If you don't get it, you'll still be heading for a star. Happiness lies not in the mere possession of money; it lies in the joy of achievement, in the thrill of the creative effort.

The value of love will always be stronger than the value of hate. Any nation or group of nations which employs hatred eventually is torn to pieces by hatred.

No business which depends for existence on paying less than living wages to its workers has any right to continue in this country... By living wages I mean more than a bare subsistence level - I mean the wages of decent living.

No democracy can long survive which does not accept as fundamental to its very existence the recognition of the rights of minorities.

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.

These economic royalists complain that we seek to overthrow the institutions of America. What they really complain of is that we seek to take away their power. Our allegiance to American institutions requires the overthrow of this kind of power. In vain they seek to hide behind the flag and the Constitution. In their blindness they forget what the flag and the Constitution stand for.

No greater tragedy exists in modern civilization than the aged, worn-out worker who after a life of ceaseless effort and useful productivity must look forward for his declining years to a poorhouse. A modern social consciousness demands a more humane and efficient arrangement.

The presidency is not merely an administrative office...It is pre-eminently a place of moral leadership.

Do Something. If it works, do more of it. If it doesn't, do something else.

People acting together as a group can accomplish things which no individual acting alone could ever hope to bring about.

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.

What America needs now is a drink.

I have seen war. I have seen war on land and sea. I have seen blood running from the wounded. I have seen men coughing out their gassed lungs. I have seen the dead in the mud. I have seen cities destroyed. I have seen 200 limping, exhausted men come out of line—the survivors of a regiment of 1,000 that went forward 48 hours before. I have seen children starving. I have seen the agony of mothers and wives. I hate war.

All of our people all over the country-except the pure-blooded Indians-are immigrants or descendants of immigrants, including even those who came over here on the Mayflower.

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 remember that any oppression, any injustice, any hatred, is a wedge designed to attack our civilization.

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.

We may make mistakes-but they must never be mistakes which result from faintness of heart or abandonment of moral principle.

In our democracy officers of the government are the servants, and never the masters of the people.