Franklin D. Roosevelt Quotes

“And while I am talking to you mothers and fathers, I give you one more assurance. I have said this before, but I shall say it again and again and again: Your boys are not going to be sent into any foreign wars.”

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

“It took six weeks of debate in the Senate to get the Arms Embargo Law repealed--and we face other delays during the present session because most of the Members of the Congress are thinking in terms of next Autumn's election. However, that is one of the prices that we who live in democracies have to pay. It is, however, worth paying, if all of us can avoid the type of government under which the unfortunate population of Germany and Russia must exist.”

“The chief problem is, of course, whether the marching of the general spirit of things is heading consciously or sub- consciously toward an idea of extension of boundaries.”

“We know that enduring peace cannot be bought at the cost of other people's freedom.”

“There should be no bitterness or hate where the sole thought is the welfare of the United States of America. No man can occupy the office of President without realizing that he is President of all the people.”

“There are as many opinions as there are experts.”

“We have always known that heedless self-interest was bad morals; we know now that it is bad economics. Out of the collapse of a prosperity whose builders boasted their practicality has come the conviction that in the long run economic morality pays.”

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

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

“One reason--perhaps the chief--of the virility of the Roosevelts is [their] very democratic spirit. They have never felt that because they were born in a good position they could put their hands in their pockets and succeed. They have felt, rather, that being born in a good position, there is no excuse for them if they did not do their duty by the community.”

“In the truest sense, freedom cannot be bestowed; it must be achieved.”

“Necessitous men are not free men.”

“For every advance that the Japanese have made since they started their frenzied career of conquest, they have had to pay a very heavy toll in warships, in transports, in planes, and in men. They are feeling the effects of those losses.”

“The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.”

“Taxation according to income is the most effective instrument yet devised to obtain just contribution from those best able to bear it and to avoid placing onerous burdens upon the mass of our people.”

“The real safeguard of democracy is education.”

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

“Frankly, I do not know how to effect a permanency in American foreign policy.”

“When you reach the end of your rope, tie a knot in it and hang on.”

“[M]y conception of liberty does not permit an individual citizen or a group of citizens to commit acts of depredation against nature in such a way as to harm their neighbors and especially to harm the future generations of Americans. If many years ago we had had the necessary knowledge, and especially the necessary willingness on the part of the Federal Government, we would have saved a sum, a sum of money which has cost the taxpayers of America two billion dollars.”

“Unless the peace that follows recognizes that the whole world is one neighborhood and does justice to the whole human race, the germs of another world war will remain as a constant threat to mankind.”

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

“Government cannot close its eyes to the pollution of waters, to the erosion of soil, to the slashing of forests any more than it can close its eyes to the need for slum clearance and schools.”

“We are fighting to save a great and precious form of government for ourselves and for the world.”