Famous Quotes

Quotes by Franklin D Roosevelt

• A conservative is a man with two perfectly good legs who, however, has never learned how to walk forward.
• 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.
• 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.
• 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.
• Democracy cannot succeed unless those who express their choice are prepared to choose wisely. The real safeguard of democracy, therefore, is education.
• 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.
• 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.
• Happiness lies in the joy of achievement and the thrill of creative effort.
• I think we consider too much the good luck of the early bird and not enough the bad luck of the early worm.
• I'm not the smartest fellow in the world, but I can sure pick smart colleagues.
• 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.
• If I went to work in a factory the first thing I'd do is join a union.
• If you treat people right they will treat you right... ninety percent of the time.
• In politics, nothing happens by accident. If it happens, you can bet it was planned that way.
• It takes a long time to bring the past up to the present.
• 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.
• Men are not prisoners of fate, but only prisoners of their own minds.
• 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.
• No government can help the destinies of people who insist in putting sectional and class consciousness ahead of general weal.
• No group and no government can properly prescribe precisely what should constitute the body of knowledge with which true education is concerned.
• 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.
• 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.
• Physical strength can never permanently withstand the impact of spiritual force.
• Prosperous farmers mean more employment, more prosperity for the workers and the business men of every industrial area in the whole country.
• 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.
• Selfishness is the only real atheism aspiration, unselfishness, the only real religion.
• 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.
• The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.
• The overwhelming majority of Americans are possessed of two great qualities a sense of humor and a sense of proportion.
• 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.
• 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.
• The truth is found when men are free to pursue it.