F. D. Roosevelt Quotes

Strength that goes wrong is even more dangerous than weakness that goes wrong.

People who 'view with alarm' never build anything.

The labor movement has a great role to play in our country today.

You'll be "damned if you do, and damned if you don't."

I have always felt that it was important that everyone who was a worker join a labor organization.

It is equality of monotony which makes the strength of the British Isles.

Criticism ... makes very little dent upon me, unless I think there is some real justification and something should be done.

At any age it does us no harm to look over our past shortcomings and plan to improve our characters and actions in the coming year.

When you build a memorial, you build it not because the person wanted it, but for the future -- for generations who didn't know the man and didn't know the era in which he lived.

Spiritual leadership should remain spiritual leadership and the temporal power should not become too important in any church.

Sports is the very fiber of all we stand for. It keeps our spirits alive.

Democracy is not a static thing. It is an everlasting march.

Taxes are paid in the sweat of every man who labors.

Inquisitiveness is the most useful talent.

We know that there are chiselers. At the bottom of every case of criticism and obstruction we have found some selfish interest, some private axe to grind.

Once you've spent two years trying to wiggle one toe, everything is in proportion.

Freedom of speech is of no use to a man who has nothing to say and freedom of worship is of no use to a man who has lost his God.

The people of America are in agreement in defending their liberties at any cost, and the first line of that defense lies in the protection of economic security.

The function of Government must be to favor no small group at the expense of its duty to protect the rights of personal freedom and of private property of all its citizens.

The democratic aspiration is no mere recent phase in human history. It is human history.

Freedom to learn is the first necessity of guaranteeing that man himself shall be self reliant enough to be free.

A serf-supporting and self-respecting democracy can plead no justification for the existence of child labor, no economic reason for chiseling workers' wages or stretching workers' hours.

We have learned the simple truth, as Emerson said that the only way to have a friend is to be one. We can gain no lasting peace if we approach it with suspicion or mistrust or with fear.

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

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.

More than just an end to war, we want an end to the beginnings of all wars.

Peace, like war, can succeed only where there is a will to enforce it, and where there is available power to enforce it.

Almighty God: Our sons, pride of our Nation, this day have set upon a mighty endeavor, a struggle to preserve our Republic, our religion, and our civilization, and to set free a suffering humanity.

Great power involves great responsibility

All private plans, all private lives, have been in a sense repealed by an overriding public danger.

The most difficult place in the world to get a clear and open perspective of the country as a whole is Washington.

Democracy, the practice of self-government, is a covenant among free men to respect the rights and liberties of their fellows.

What I seek is the highest possible batting average.

We are going to tax and tax, spend and spend, elect and elect.

When a country is at war we want Congressmen, regardless of party, to back up the government of the United States.

I have seen war ... I hate war.

General de Gaulle was a thoroughly bad boy. The day he arrived, he thought he was Joan of Arc and the following day he insisted that he was Georges Clemenceau.

All free peoples are deeply impressed by the courage and steadfastness of the Greek nation.

Coming to grips with the reality that our planet is not the only one harboring intelligent life the universe.

I believe that we are going to get along very well with him [Josef Stalin] and the Russian people - very well indeed.

Older men declare war. But it is youth that must fight and die. And it is youth who must inherit the tribulation, the sorrow and the triumphs that are the aftermath of war.

Employers and employees alike have learned that in union there is strength.

[D]rilling and arming, when carried on on a national scale, excite whole populations to frenzies which end in war.

Resort to force in the Great War (I) failed to bring tranquillity. Victory and defeat alike were sterile. That lesson the world should have learned.

Continued dependence on relief inducers a spiritual and moral disintegration fundamentally destructive to the national fiber.

I've never been unemployed. I've never been very fully employed either.

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.

I see one-third of a nation ill-housed, ill-clad, ill-nourished.

I have seen children starving. I have seen the agony of mothers and wives. I hate war.

On the European Front the most important development of the past year has been the crushing offensive of the Great Armies of Russia.