Franklin D. Roosevelt Quotes

We look forward to a world founded upon four essential human freedoms. The first is freedom of speech and expression - everywhere in the world. The second is freedom of every person to worship God in his own way everywhere in the world. The third is freedom from want...everywhere in the world. The fourth is freedom from fear... anywhere in the world.

~ 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

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

~ 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

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. We will gain the inevitable triumph, so help us God.

~ 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

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

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

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

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

~ 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

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

~ 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

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

~ 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

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

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

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 group and no government can properly prescribe precisely what should constitute the body of knowledge with which true education is concerned.

~ Franklin D. Roosevelt

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

~ Franklin D. Roosevelt

When you reach the end of your rope, tie a knot in it and hang on.

~ Franklin D. Roosevelt

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

~ 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

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

~ 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

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

~ Franklin D. Roosevelt

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

~ 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