Franklin D. Roosevelt Quotes

“I am much interested and deeply impressed by what he has accomplished and by his evidenced honest purpose of restoring Italy and seeking to prevent general European trouble.”

“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.”

“Nationwide thinking, nationwide planning and nationwide action are the three great essentials to prevent nationwide crises for future generations to struggle through.”

“Forests are the lungs of our land.”

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

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

“America has been the New World in all tongues, to all peoples, not because this continent was a new-found land, but because all those who came here believed they could create upon this continent a new life -- a life that should be new in freedom.”

“Our handicaps exist only in our minds.”

“We had to struggle with the old enemies of peace - business and financial monopoly, speculation, reckless banking, class antagonism, sectionalism, war profiteering”

“In a democratic nation, power must be linked with responsibility, and obliged to defend and justify itself within the framework of the general good.”

“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.”

“Finally, in our progress toward a resumption of work we require two safeguards against a return of the evils of the old order: there must be a strict supervision of all banking and credits and investments; there must be an end to speculation with other people's money, and there must be provision for an adequate but sound currency.”

“But the challenge is always the same - whether each generation facing its own circumstances can summon the practical devotion to attain and retain that greatest good for the greatest number which this government of the people was created to ensure.”

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

“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.”

“Taxes are paid in the sweat of every man who labors. If those taxes are excessive, they are reflected in idle factories, in tax-sold farms, and in hordes of hungry people, tramping the streets and seeking jobs in vain. Our workers may never see a tax bill, but they pay. They pay in deductions from wages, in increased cost of what they buy, or - as now - in broad unemployment throughout the land.”

“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.”

“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.”

“Preparation for defense is an inalienable prerogative of a sovereign state.”

“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.”

“All free peoples are deeply impressed by the courage and steadfastness of the Greek nation.”

“The only thing we have to fear is a giant wheelchair-crushing squid. Well... uh... actually, I guess that's the only thing I have to fear.”

“I read in a newspaper that I was to be received with all the honors customarily rendered to a foreign ruler. I am grateful for the honors; but something within me rebelled at that word 'foreign'. I say this because when I have been in Canada, I have never heard a Canadian refer to an American as a 'foreigner'. He is just an 'American'. And, in the same way, in the United States, Canadians are not 'foreigners', they are 'Canadians'. That simple little distinction illustrates to me better than anything else the relationship between our two countries.”

“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.”

“I hope that your committee will not permit doubt as to constitutionality, however reasonable, to block the suggested legislation”