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 government can help the destinies of people who insist in putting sectional and class consciousness ahead of general weal.
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.
The United States Constitution has proved itself the most marvelously elastic compilation of rules of government ever written.
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.
The school is the last expenditure upon which America should be willing to economize.
War is a contagion.
The overwhelming majority of Americans are possessed of two great qualities a sense of humor and a sense of proportion.
I am neither bitter nor cynical but I do wish there was less immaturity in political thinking.
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.
This generation of Americans has a rendezvous with destiny.
Are you laboring under the impression that I read these memoranda of yours? I can't even lift them.
The only limit to our realization of tomorrow will be our doubts of today.
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.
I ask you to judge me by the enemies I have made.
I'm not the smartest fellow in the world, but I can sure pick smart colleagues.
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.
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.
No group and no government can properly prescribe precisely what should constitute the body of knowledge with which true education is concerned.
Democracy cannot succeed unless those who express their choice are prepared to choose wisely. The real safeguard of democracy, therefore, is education.
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.
I believe that in every country the people themselves are more peaceably and liberally inclined than their governments.
Prosperous farmers mean more employment, more prosperity for the workers and the business men of every industrial area in the whole country.
When you see a rattlesnake poised to strike, you do not wait until he has struck to crush him.
A reactionary is a somnambulist walking backwards.
It is the duty of the President to propose and it is the privilege of the Congress to dispose.
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 truth is found when men are free to pursue it.
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.
I pledge you, I pledge myself, to a new deal for the American people.
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.
There is nothing I love as much as a good fight.
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.
In our seeking for economic and political progress, we all go up - or else we all go down.
I do not look upon these United States as a finished product. We are still in the making.
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.
We must lay hold of the fact that economic laws are not made by nature. They are made by human beings.
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.
It is fun to be in the same decade with you.
I am a Christian and a Democrat, that's all.
We are trying to construct a more inclusive society. We are going to make a country in which no one is left out.
The nation that destroys its soil destroys itself.
Whoever seeks to set one religion against another seeks to destroy all religion.
If I went to work in a factory the first thing I'd do is join a union.
Physical strength can never permanently withstand the impact of spiritual force.
Be sincere; be brief; be seated.
To reach a port, we must sail - sail, not tie at anchor - sail, not drift.
Here is my principle: Taxes shall be levied according to ability to pay. That is the only American principle.
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.
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.
