Quotes By Franklin D. Roosevelt

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

The nation that destroys its soil destroys itself.

I pledge you, I pledge myself, to a new deal for the American people.

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.

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

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

Take a method and try it. If it fails, admit it frankly, and try another. But by all means, try something.

Are you laboring under the impression that I read these memoranda of yours? I can't even lift them.

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.

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

I believe that in every country the people themselves are more peaceably and liberally inclined than their governments.