Words matter. These are the best Franklin D. Roosevelt Quotes, and they’re great for sharing with your friends.
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.
The United States Constitution has proved itself the most marvelously elastic compilation of rules of government ever written.
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.
I think we consider too much the good luck of the early bird and not enough the bad luck of the early worm.
In our seeking for economic and political progress, we all go up – or else we all go down.
Democracy cannot succeed unless those who express their choice are prepared to choose wisely. The real safeguard of democracy, therefore, is education.
I do not look upon these United States as a finished product. We are still in the making.
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.
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 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.
A reactionary is a somnambulist walking backwards.
Remember you are just an extra in everyone else’s play.
Whoever seeks to set one religion against another seeks to destroy all religion.
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.
It is an unfortunate human failing that a full pocketbook often groans more loudly than an empty stomach.
Rules are not necessarily sacred, principles are.
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.
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.
I ask you to judge me by the enemies I have made.
I pledge you, I pledge myself, to a new deal for the American people.
If I went to work in a factory the first thing I’d do is join a union.
A conservative is a man with two perfectly good legs who, however, has never learned how to walk forward.
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.
The overwhelming majority of Americans are possessed of two great qualities a sense of humor and a sense of proportion.
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.
There are many ways of going forward, but only one way of standing still.
The virtues are lost in self-interest as rivers are lost in the sea.
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.
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.
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.
Happiness lies in the joy of achievement and the thrill of creative effort.
No group and no government can properly prescribe precisely what should constitute the body of knowledge with which true education is concerned.
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.
Self-interest is the enemy of all true affection.
Prosperous farmers mean more employment, more prosperity for the workers and the business men of every industrial area in the whole country.
I am a Christian and a Democrat, that’s all.
Be sincere; be brief; be seated.
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.
When you reach the end of your rope, tie a knot in it and hang on.
The only limit to our realization of tomorrow will be our doubts of today.
War is a contagion.
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.
It is fun to be in the same decade with you.
I am a Christian and a Democrat, that’s all.
When you see a rattlesnake poised to strike, you do not wait until he has struck to crush him.
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.
The school is the last expenditure upon which America should be willing to economize.
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.
In politics, nothing happens by accident. If it happens, you can bet it was planned that way.
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.
