Franklin D. Roosevelt Quotes (139 Quotes)

Whoever seeks to set one race against another seeks to enslave all races.

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

On this tenth day in June, 1940, the hand that held the dagger has struck it into the back of its neighbor

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

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

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

Self-help and self-control are the essence of the American tradition

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

I hope that your committee will not permit doubt as to constitutionality, however reasonable, to block the suggested legislation (the Guffey Coal Control Bill)

Books may be burned and cities sacked, but truth like the yearning for freedom, lives in the hearts of humble men and women

Eternal truths will be neither true nor eternal unless they have fresh meaning for every new social situation.

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.

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.

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

In a time grown too solemn and somber, ... showed us all how to laugh.

It is fun to be in the same decade with you.

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

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

Presidents do make mistakes, but the immortal Dante tells us that divine justice weighs the sins of the cold-blooded and the sins of the warm-hearted in different scales

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.

These unhappy times call for the building of plans that build from the bottom up and not from the top down, that put their faith once more in the forgotten man at the bottom of the economic pyramid.

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.

The moment a mere numerical superiority by either states or voters in this country proceeds to ignore the needs and desires of the minority, and for their own selfish purpose or advancement, hamper or oppress that minority, or debar them in any way from equal privileges and equal rights -- that moment will mark the failure of our constitutional system.

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

The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.

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

I have no expectation of making a hit every time I come to bat.

Selfishness is the only real atheism; aspiration, unselfishness, the only real religion.

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.

One thing is sure. We have to do something. We have to do the best we know how at the moment... If it doesn't turn out right, we can modify it as we go along.

Self-interest is the enemy of all true affection.

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

It got to a point where I had to get a hair-cut or a violin

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.

No government can help the destinies of people who insist in putting sectional and class consciousness ahead of general weal.

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

Concentration of wealth and power has been built upon other people's money, other people's business, other people's labor. Under this concentration, independent business 8230 has been a menace to 8230 American society.

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.

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