Franklin D. Roosevelt – 42 Quotes

42 Quotes by Franklin D. Roosevelt

If I went to work in a factory the first thing I’d do is join a union.

– Franklin D. Roosevelt

War is a contagion.

– 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

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

It takes a long time to bring the past up to the present.

– Franklin D. Roosevelt

If you treat people right they will treat you right… ninety percent of the time.

– 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

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

Whoever seeks to set one religion against another seeks to destroy all religion.

– Franklin D. Roosevelt

Selfishness is the only real atheism aspiration, unselfishness, the only real religion.

– Franklin D. Roosevelt

In politics, nothing happens by accident. If it happens, you can bet it was planned that way.

– 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

We must lay hold of the fact that economic laws are not made by nature. They are made by human beings.

– Franklin D. Roosevelt

The truth is found when men are free to pursue it.

– Franklin D. Roosevelt

Men are not prisoners of fate, but only prisoners of their own minds.

– 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

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.

– Franklin D. Roosevelt

I’m not the smartest fellow in the world, but I can sure pick smart colleagues.

– 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

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.

– 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

Happiness lies in the joy of achievement and the thrill of creative effort.

– Franklin D. Roosevelt

The overwhelming majority of Americans are possessed of two great qualities a sense of humor and a sense of proportion.

– 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

No government can help the destinies of people who insist in putting sectional and class consciousness ahead of general weal.

– Franklin D. Roosevelt

The United States Constitution has proved itself the most marvelously elastic compilation of rules of government ever written.

– 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

There is nothing I love as much as a good fight.

– Franklin D. Roosevelt

A conservative is a man with two perfectly good legs who, however, has never learned how to walk forward.

– 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

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

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

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

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 only thing we have to fear is fear itself.

– Franklin D. Roosevelt

Physical strength can never permanently withstand the impact of spiritual force.

– 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

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

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

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

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

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