Franklin D. Roosevelt Quotations

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

The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.

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.

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.

Nobody will ever deprive the American people of the right to vote except the American people themselves and the only way they could do this is by not voting.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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 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.

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.

I ask you to judge me by the enemies I have made.

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.

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.

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

Self-interest is the enemy of all true affection.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

This generation of Americans has a rendezvous with destiny.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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 nation that destroys its soil destroys itself.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

To reach a port, we must sail - sail, not tie at anchor - sail, not drift.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

There are as many opinions as there are experts.

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

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

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.

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.

Are you laboring under the impression that I read these memoranda of yours? I can't even lift them.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

The truth is found when men are free to pursue it.

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

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

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.

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....

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 defend and we build a way of life, not for America alone, but for all of mankind

When you get to the end of your rope, tie a knot and hang on.

We shall make the most lasting progress if we recognize that Social Security can furnish only a base upon which each one of our citizens may build his individual security through his own individual efforts.

We can never insure 100 percent of the population against 100 percent of the hazards and vicissitudes of life, but we have tried to frame a law which will give some measure of protection to the average citizen and to his family against the loss of a job and against poverty-ridden old age,

When you come to the end of your rope, tie a knot and hang on.

Let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.

No business which depends for existence on paying less than living wages to its workers has any right to continue in this country

If it fails, admit it frankly and try another. But above all, try something.

We can gain no lasting peace if we approach it with suspicion and mistrust or with fear. We can gain it only if we proceed with the understanding, the confidence, and the courage which flow from conviction.

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

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

It is a terrible thing to look over your shoulder when you are trying to lead -- and find no one there.

Repetition does not transform a lie into the truth.

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

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

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

We had to struggle with the old enemies of peace-business and financial monopoly, speculation, reckless banking, class antagonism, sectionism, war profiteering. They had begun to consider the Government of the United States as a mere appendage to their own affairs. We know that Government by organized money is just as dangerous as Government by organized mob. Never before in history have these forces been so united against one candidate as they stand today. They are unanimous in their hatred for me - and I welcome their hatred. I should like to have it said of my first administration that in it the forces of selfishness and of lust for power met their match. I should like to have it said of my second administration that in it these forces met their master.- President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Speech at Madison Square Garden

We can afford all that we need; but we cannot afford all that we want

Today we are faced with the preeminent fact that, 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

We should never forge those that did not return,

when only a president could have that kind of accommodation.