Quotes By 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.

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 think we consider too much the good luck of the early bird and not enough the bad luck of the early worm.

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.

To reach a port, we must sail - sail, not tie at anchor - sail, not drift.

Be sincere; be brief; be seated.

Confidence... thrives on honesty, on honor, on the sacredness of obligations, on faithful protection and on unselfish performance. Without them it cannot live.

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

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.

There are as many opinions as there are experts.

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.

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

When you get to the end of your rope, tie a knot and hang on.

War is a contagion.

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.

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.

Here is my principle: Taxes shall be levied according to ability to pay. That is the only American principle.

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.

This generation of Americans has a rendezvous with destiny.

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.

A reactionary is a somnambulist walking backwards.

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.

It is an unfortunate human failing that a full pocketbook often groans more loudly than an empty stomach.

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.

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.

We are trying to construct a more inclusive society. We are going to make a country in which no one is left out.

Self-interest is the enemy of all true affection.

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.

The nation that destroys its soil destroys itself.

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