80+ Franklin D. Roosevelt Quotes to Inspire Leadership, Hope, and the Power of Unity
- January 30, 1882 – April 12, 1945
- American
- Politician
- [Achievements]
- As president of the United States, he promoted economic recovery from the Great Depression with the New Deal policy
- He led the Allied powers to victory in World War II
- [Criticism]
- His hard-line policy toward Japan triggered the attack on Pearl Harbor
- He pushed for the forced internment policy of Japanese Americans due to racist feelings toward the Japanese
- He promoted the Manhattan Project, a plan to develop the atomic bomb
- “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.”
- “If you treat people right they will treat you right… ninety percent of the time.”
- “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.”
- “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. We will gain the inevitable triumph, so help us God.”
- “The nation that destroys its soil destroys itself.”
- “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.”
- “Here is my principle: Taxes shall be levied according to ability to pay. That is the only American principle.”
- “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.”
- “Remember you are just an extra in everyone else’s play.”
- “Confidence… thrives on honesty, on honor, on the sacredness of obligations, on faithful protection and on unselfish performance. Without them it cannot live.”
- “I do not look upon these United States as a finished product. We are still in the making.”
- “To reach a port, we must sail – sail, not tie at anchor – sail, not drift.”
- “It takes a long time to bring the past up to the present.”
- “I ask you to judge me by the enemies I have made.”
- “The United States Constitution has proved itself the most marvelously elastic compilation of rules of government ever written.”
- “It is the duty of the President to propose and it is the privilege of the Congress to dispose.”
- “No group and no government can properly prescribe precisely what should constitute the body of knowledge with which true education is concerned.”
- “When you see a rattlesnake poised to strike, you do not wait until he has struck to crush him.”
- “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.”
- “In politics, nothing happens by accident. If it happens, you can bet it was planned that way.”
- “In our seeking for economic and political progress, we all go up – or else we all go down.”
- “I think we consider too much the good luck of the early bird and not enough the bad luck of the early worm.”
- “Rules are not necessarily sacred, principles are.”
- “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.”
- “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’m not the smartest fellow in the world, but I can sure pick smart colleagues.”
- “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.”
- “There are as many opinions as there are experts.”
- “We must lay hold of the fact that economic laws are not made by nature. They are made by human beings.”
- “No government can help the destinies of people who insist in putting sectional and class consciousness ahead of general weal.”
- “Are you laboring under the impression that I read these memoranda of yours? I can’t even lift them.”
- “Whoever seeks to set one religion against another seeks to destroy all religion.”
- “We are trying to construct a more inclusive society. We are going to make a country in which no one is left out.”
- “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.”
- “War is a contagion.”
- “Be sincere; be brief; be seated.”
- “There are many ways of going forward, but only one way of standing still.”
- “It is an unfortunate human failing that a full pocketbook often groans more loudly than an empty stomach.”
- “This generation of Americans has a rendezvous with destiny.”
- “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.”
- “Democracy cannot succeed unless those who express their choice are prepared to choose wisely. The real safeguard of democracy, therefore, is education.”
- “When you reach the end of your rope, tie a knot in it and hang on.”
- “I pledge you, I pledge myself, to a new deal for the American people.”
- “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 government.”
- “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.”
- “I am a Christian and a Democrat, that’s all.”
- “We have always held to the hope, the belief, the conviction that there is a better life, a better world, beyond the horizon.”
- “The overwhelming majority of Americans are possessed of two great qualities: a sense of humor and a sense of proportion.”
- “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.”
- “Prosperous farmers mean more employment, more prosperity for the workers and the business men of every industrial area in the whole country.”
- “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.”
- “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.”
- “The truth is found when men are free to pursue it.”
- “The virtues are lost in self-interest as rivers are lost in the sea.”
- “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.”
- “Take a method and try it. If it fails, admit it frankly, and try another. But by all means, try something.”
- “A conservative is a man with two perfectly good legs who, however, has never learned how to walk forward.”
- “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.”
- “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.”
- “There is a mysterious cycle in human events. To some generations much is given. Of other generations much is expected. This generation of Americans has a rendezvous with destiny.”
- “The school is the last expenditure upon which America should be willing to economize.”
- “Competition has been shown to be useful up to a certain point and no further, but cooperation, which is the thing we must strive for today, begins where competition leaves off.”
- “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.”
- “Physical strength can never permanently withstand the impact of spiritual force.”
- “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.”
- “I am neither bitter nor cynical but I do wish there was less immaturity in political thinking.”
- “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 only limit to our realization of tomorrow will be our doubts of today.”
- “Self-interest is the enemy of all true affection.”
- “Happiness lies in the joy of achievement and the thrill of creative effort.”
- “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.”
- “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.”
- “It is common sense to take a method and try it. If it fails, admit it frankly and try another. But above all, try something.”
- “There is nothing I love as much as a good fight.”
- “A reactionary is a somnambulist walking backwards.”
- “It is fun to be in the same decade with you.”
- “Men are not prisoners of fate, but only prisoners of their own minds.”
- “I believe that in every country the people themselves are more peaceably and liberally inclined than their governments.”
- “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.”