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Quotes by Franklin D. Roosevelt


Take a method and try it. If it fails, admit it frankly, and try another. But by all means, try something.
– Franklin D. Roosevelt
Are you laboring under the impression that I read these memoranda of yours? I can't even lift them.
– Franklin D. Roosevelt
Confidence... thrives on honesty, on honor, on the sacredness of obligations, on faithful protection and on unselfish performance. Without them it cannot live.
– Franklin D. Roosevelt
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.
– Franklin D. Roosevelt
Here is my principle: Taxes shall be levied according to ability to pay. That is the only American principle.
– Franklin D. Roosevelt
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.
– Franklin D. Roosevelt
I ask you to judge me by the enemies I have made.
– Franklin D. Roosevelt
I pledge you, I pledge myself, to a new deal for the American people.
– Franklin D. Roosevelt
I think we consider too much the good luck of the early bird and not enough the bad luck of the early worm.
– Franklin D. Roosevelt
I'm not the smartest fellow in the world, but I can sure pick smart colleagues.
– Franklin D. Roosevelt
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.
– Franklin D. Roosevelt
In our seeking for economic and political progress, we all go up - or else we all go down.
– Franklin D. Roosevelt
In politics, nothing happens by accident. If it happens, you can bet it was planned that way.
– Franklin D. Roosevelt
It is an unfortunate human failing that a full pocketbook often groans more loudly than an empty stomach.
– Franklin D. Roosevelt
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.
– Franklin D. Roosevelt
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.
– Franklin D. Roosevelt
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.
– Franklin D. Roosevelt
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.
– Franklin D. Roosevelt
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.
– Franklin D. Roosevelt
Remember you are just an extra in everyone else's play.
– Franklin D. Roosevelt
Rules are not necessarily sacred, principles are.
– Franklin D. Roosevelt
Self-interest is the enemy of all true affection.
– Franklin D. Roosevelt
Selfishness is the only real atheism; aspiration, unselfishness, the only real religion.
– Franklin D. Roosevelt
Somoza may be a son of a bitch, but he's our son of a bitch.
– Franklin D. Roosevelt
The liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it comes strong than their democratic state itself. That, in its essence, is fascism - ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or any controlling private power.
– Franklin D. Roosevelt
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.
– Franklin D. Roosevelt
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.
– Franklin D. Roosevelt
The virtues are lost in self-interest as rivers are lost in the sea.
– Franklin D. Roosevelt
There are as many opinions as there are experts.
– Franklin D. Roosevelt
There is nothing I love as much as a good fight.
– Franklin D. Roosevelt
There is nothing to fear but fear itself.
– Franklin D. Roosevelt
To reach a port, we must sail - sail, not tie at anchor - sail, not drift.
– Franklin D. Roosevelt
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.
– Franklin D. Roosevelt
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.
– Franklin D. Roosevelt
We have always known that heedless self-interest was bad morals; we now know that it is bad economics.
– Franklin D. Roosevelt
I have seen war. I have seen war on land and sea. I have seen blood running from the wounded. I have seen men coughing out their gassed lungs. I have seen the dead in the mud. I have seen cities destroyed. I have seen 200 limping, exhausted men come out of line—the survivors of a regiment of 1,000 that went forward 48 hours before. I have seen children starving. I have seen the agony of mothers and wives. I hate war.
I have passed unnumbered hours, I shall pass unnumbered hours thinking and planning how war may be kept from this nation.
– Franklin D. Roosevelt
Happiness lies not in the mere possession of money; it lies in the joy of achievement, in the thrill of creative effort. The joy and moral stimulation of work no longer must be forgotten in the mad chase of evanescent profits. These dark days will be worth all they cost us if they teach us that our true destiny is not to be ministered unto but to minister to ourselves and to our fellow men.
– Franklin D. Roosevelt
As Americans, we go forward, in the service of our country, by the will of God.
– Franklin D. Roosevelt
I sometimes think that the saving grace of America lies in the fact that the overwhelming majority of Americans are possessed of two great qualities- a sense of humor and a sense of proportion.
– Franklin D. Roosevelt
If you treat people right they will treat you right - ninety percent of the time.
– Franklin D. Roosevelt
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 too little.
– Franklin D. Roosevelt
We cannot always build the future for our youth, but we can build our youth for the future.
– Franklin D. Roosevelt
First of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself - nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.
– Franklin D. Roosevelt
It is fun to be in the same decade with you.
– Franklin D. Roosevelt
A conservative is a man with two perfectly good legs who, however, has never learned to walk forward.
– Franklin D. Roosevelt
Repetition does not transform a lie into a truth.
– Franklin D. Roosevelt
The true conservative is the man who has a real concern for injustices and takes thought against the day of reckoning.
– Franklin D. Roosevelt
In the truest sense, freedom cannot be bestowed; it must be achieved.
– Franklin D. Roosevelt
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.
– Franklin D. Roosevelt
Whoever seeks to set one religion against another seeks to destroy all religion.
– Franklin D. Roosevelt
We must lay hold of the fact that economic laws are not made by nature. They are made by human beings.
– Franklin D. Roosevelt
We have always held to the hope, the belief, the conviction that there is a better life, a better world, beyond the horizon.
– Franklin D. Roosevelt
We are trying to construct a more inclusive society. We are going to make a country in which no one is left out.
– Franklin D. Roosevelt
War is a contagion.
– Franklin D. Roosevelt
The United States Constitution has proved itself the most marvelously elastic compilation of rules of government ever written.
– Franklin D. Roosevelt
The truth is found when men are free to pursue it.
– Franklin D. Roosevelt
Prosperous farmers mean more employment, more prosperity for the workers and the business men of every industrial area in the whole country.
– Franklin D. Roosevelt
Physical strength can never permanently withstand the impact of spiritual force.
– Franklin D. Roosevelt
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.
– Franklin D. Roosevelt
No group and no government can properly prescribe precisely what should constitute the body of knowledge with which true education is concerned.
– Franklin D. Roosevelt
No government can help the destinies of people who insist in putting sectional and class consciousness ahead of general weal.
– Franklin D. Roosevelt
Men are not prisoners of fate, but only prisoners of their own minds.
– Franklin D. Roosevelt
It takes a long time to bring the past up to the present.
– Franklin D. Roosevelt
If I went to work in a factory the first thing I'd do is join a union.
– Franklin D. Roosevelt
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.
– Franklin D. Roosevelt
Democracy cannot succeed unless those who express their choice are prepared to choose wisely. The real safeguard of democracy, therefore, is education.
– Franklin D. Roosevelt
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.
– Franklin D. Roosevelt
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.
– Franklin D. Roosevelt