Franklin D. Roosevelt
Necessitous men are not free men.Collection: Men
I have no expectation of making a hit every time I come to bat.Collection: Expectations
It is a terrible thing to look over your shoulder when you are trying to lead - and find no one there.Collection: Leadership
Forests are the lungs of our land.Collection: Land
A government can be no better than the public opinion which sustains it.Collection: Government
Of course we believe these things. We believe in social security. We believe in work for the unemployed. We believe in saving homes. Cross our hearts and hope to die! We believe in all these things. But we do not like the way that the present administration is doing them. Just turn them over to us. We will do all of them, we will do more of them, we will do them better and, most important of all, the doing of them will not cost anybody anything!Collection: Believe
The true conservative is the man who has a real concern for injustices and takes thought against the day of reckoning.Collection: Real
It is time to provide a smashing answer for those cynical men who say that a democracy cannot be honest, cannot be efficient.... We have in the darkest moments of our national trials retained our faith in our own ability to master our own destiny.Collection: Destiny
It [concentration of wealth and power] has been a menace to . . . American democracy.Collection: Concentration Of Wealth
The lessons of history, confirmed by the evidence immediately before me, show conclusively that continued dependence upon relief induces a spiritual disintegration fundamentally destructive to the national fiber. To dole out relief in this way is to administer a narcotic, a subtle destroyer of the human spirit. It is inimical to the dictates of a sound policy. It is in violation of the traditions of America.Collection: Spiritual
The democratic aspiration is no mere recent phase in human history. It is human history.Collection: Phases
Taxes are paid in the sweat of every man who labors. If those taxes are excessive, they are reflected in idle factories, in tax-sold farms, and in hordes of hungry people, tramping the streets and seeking jobs in vain. Our workers may never see a tax bill, but they pay. They pay in deductions from wages, in increased cost of what they buy, or - as now - in broad unemployment throughout the land.Collection: Jobs
Men and nature must work hand in hand. The throwing out of balance of the resources of nature throws out of balance also the lives of men.Collection: Nature
Inquisitiveness is the most useful talent.Collection: Talent
It seems to me that the dedication of a library is an act of faith. To bring together the resources of the past and to house them in buildings where they will be preserved for the use of men and women in the future, a nation must believe in three things. It must believe in the past. it must believe in the future. It must, above all, believe in the capacity of its own people so to learn from the past that they can gain in judgment in creating their own future.Collection: Believe
As Commander-in-Chief, I take pleasure in commending the reading of the Bible to all who serve in the Armed Forces of the United States. Throughout the centuries, men of many faiths and diverse origins have found in the Sacred Book words of wisdom, counsel, and inspiration. It is a fountain of strength...an aid in attaining the highest aspiration of the human soul.Collection: Book
We cannot always build a future for our youth, but we can always build our youth for the future.Collection: Relationship
The royalists of the economic order have conceded that political freedom was the business of the government, but they have maintained that economic slavery was nobody's business. They granted that the government could protect the citizen in his right to vote, but they denied that the government could do anything to protect the citizen in his right to work and his right to live. Today we stand committed to the proposition that freedom is no half-and-half affair. If the average citizen is guaranteed equal opportunity in the polling place, he must have equal opportunity in the market place.Collection: Opportunity
Beware of that profound enemy of the free enterprise system who pays lip-service to free competition, but also labels every antitrust prosecution as a persecution.Collection: Business
If in other lands the press and books and literature of all kinds are censored, we must redouble our efforts here to keep them freeCollection: Book
It was natural and perhaps human that the privileged princes of these new economic dynasties, thirsting for power, reached out for control over government itself. They created a new despotism and wrapped it in the robes of legal sanction. ...And as a result the average man once more confronts the problem that faced the Minute Man.Collection: Men
All safe deposit boxes in banks or financial institutions have been sealed... and may only be opened in the presence of an agent of the I.R.S.Collection: Depression
Our national debt after all is an internal debt owed not only by the Nation but to the Nation. If our children have to pay interest on it they will pay that interest to themselves. A reasonable internal debt will not impoverish our children or put the Nation into bankruptcy.Collection: Children
A small group had concentrated into their own hands an almost complete control over other people's property, other people's money, other people's labor - other people's lives. For too many of us life was no longer free; liberty no longer real; men could no longer follow the pursuit of happiness.Collection: Real
True wealth is not a static thing. It is a living thing made out of the disposition of men to create and distribute the good things of life with rising standards of living.Collection: Money
Industrial combination is not wrong in itself. The danger lies in taking government into partnership.Collection: Lying
There is much to be said against the climate on the coast of British Columbia and Alaska; yet, I believe that the scenery of one good day will compensate the tourists who will go there in increasing numbers.Collection: Beauty
We can afford all that we need; but we can not afford all [that] we want.Collection: Presidential
That is the spiral galaxy in Andromeda. It is as large as our Milky Way. It is one of a hundred million galaxies. It consists of one hundred billion suns. Now I think we are small enough.Collection: Science
Old women are the secret to the fluffiest cakes.Collection: Cake
Frankly, I do not like the idea of conversations to define the term "unconditional surrender."The German people can have dinned into their ears what I said in my Christmas Eve speech--in effect, that we have no thought of destroying the German people and that we want them to live through the generations like other European peoples on condition, of course, that they get rid of their present philosophy of conquest.Collection: Philosophy
I've fired my last shot. I think I should have another round in my belt.Collection: War
Let us move forward with strong and active faith.Collection: Strong
Lord, reform Thy world, beginning with me.Collection: Reform
Dealing with the State Department is like watching an elephant become pregnant.Collection: Government
The money-changers have fled from their high seats in the temple of our civilization. We may now restore that temple to the ancient truths.Collection: Civilization
I have seen war ... I hate war.Collection: Hate
There is no group in America that can withstand the force of an aroused public opinion.Collection: America
There can be little doubt that in many ways the story of bridge building is the story of civilisation. By it we can readily measure an important part of a people's progress.Collection: Bridges
A point has been reached where the peoples of the Americas must take cognizance of growing ill-will, of marked trends toward aggression, of increasing armaments, of shortening tempers--a situation which has in it many of the elements that lead to the tragedy of general war.... Peace is threatened by those who seek selfish power.Collection: Selfish
Since becoming President, I have come to know that the finest of Americans we have abroad today are the missionaries of the cross. I am humiliated that I am not finding this out until this late day the worth of foreign missions and the nobility of the missionaries.Collection: President
A world turned into a stereotype, a society converted into a regiment, a life translated into a routine, make it difficult for either art or artists to survive. Crush individuality in society and you crush art as well. Nourish the conditions of a free life and you nourish the arts, too.Collection: Crush
We have always known that heedless self-interest was bad morals; we know now that it is bad economics. Out of the collapse of a prosperity whose builders boasted their practicality has come the conviction that in the long run economic morality pays.Collection: Running
For every advance that the Japanese have made since they started their frenzied career of conquest, they have had to pay a very heavy toll in warships, in transports, in planes, and in men. They are feeling the effects of those losses.Collection: Loss
Let us not confuse objectives with methods. Too many so-called leaders of the nation fail to see the forest because of the trees. Too many of them fail to recognize the vital necessity of planning for definite objectives. True leadership calls for the setting forth of the objectives and the rallying of public opinion in support of these objectives.Collection: Wisdom
I am ... willing to make it clear that American foreign policy must uphold the sanctity of international treaties. That is the cornerstone on which all relations between nations must rest.Collection: Sanctity
Of course we will continue to work for cheaper electricity in the homes and on the farms of America; for better and cheaper transportation; for low interest rates; for sounder home financing; for better banking; for the regulation of security issues; for reciprocal trade among nations and for the wiping out of slums. And my friends, for all of these we have only begun to fight.Collection: Home
The trade agreement which I had the privilege of signing with your Prime Minister last autumn is tangible evidence of the desire of the people of both countries to practice what they preach when they speak of the good neighbor. In the solution of the grave problems that face the world today, frank dealing, cooperation and a spirit of give and take between nations is more important than ever before.Collection: Country
They realize that in thirty-four months we have built up new instruments of public power. In the hands of a peoples Government this power is wholesome and proper. But in the hands of political puppets of an economic autocracy such power would provide shackles for the liberties of the people.Collection: Power