F. D. Roosevelt Quotes

I believe that there should be a very much heavier progressive tax on very large incomes, a tax which should increase in a very marked fashion for the gigantic incomes.

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.

We must be the great arsenal of Democracy.

The true conservative is the man who has a real concern for injustices and takes thought against the day of reckoning.

The labor unions shall have a square deal, and the corporations shall have a square deal, and in addition, all private citizens shall have a square deal.

I never forget that I live in a house owned by all the American people and that I have been given their trust.

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.

To exist as a nation, to prosper as a state, and to live as a people, we must have trees.

The war for freedom will never really be won because the price of freedom is constant vigilance over ourselves and over our Government.

A little simplification would be the first step toward rational living, I think.

I do not intend that our natural resources shall be exploited by the few against the interests of the many.

We have room in this country for but one flag, the Stars and Stripes!

We should not forget that it will be just as important to our descendants to be prosperous in their time as it is to us to be prosperous in our time.

Perhaps nature is our best assurance of immortality.

Absence and death are the same - only that in death there is no suffering.

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.

Necessitous men are not free men.

Let individuals contribute as they desire; but let us prohibit in effective fashion all corporations from making contributions for any political purpose, directly or indirectly.

...conservation of land and conservation of people frequently go hand in hand.

The beauty and charm of the wilderness are his for the asking, for the edges of the wilderness lie close beside the beaten roads of the present travel.

I do not believe in communism any more than you do but there is nothing wrong with the Communists in this country. Several of the best friends I have got are Communists.

There can be no fifty-fifty Americanism in this country. There is room here for only 100% Americanism, only for those who are Americans and nothing else

This is a time for action — not for war, but for mobilization of every bit of peace machinery.

Free speech exercised both individually and through a free press, is a necessity in any country where people are themselves free.

We must do that which we think we cannot.

There's nothing to fear but a wide receiver who can run a 100-yard dash in under 10 seconds.

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.

Rules are not necessarily sacred, principles are.

Remember you are just an extra in everyone else's play.

Great corporations exist only because they are created and safeguarded by our institutions; and it is therefore our right and duty to see that they work in harmony with these institutions.

We must all either wear out or rust out, every one of us. My choice is to wear out.

I believe that the next half century will determine if we will advance the cause of Christian civilization or revert to the horrors of brutal paganism.

It is better to be faithful than famous.

The conservation of our natural resources and their proper use constitute the fundamental problem which underlies almost every other problem of our national life.

Obedience of the law is demanded; not asked as a favor.

There is nothing to fear except fear it's self.

The pacifist is as surely a traitor to his country and to humanity as is the most brutal wrongdoer.

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.

There is not one among us in whom a devil does not dwell; at some time, on some point, that devil masters each of us... It is not having been in the Dark House, but having left it, that counts.

Freedom means the supremacy of human rights everywhere. Our support goes to those who struggle to gain those rights or keep them.

Happiness is not a goal, it is a by-product. For what keeps our interest in life and makes us look forward to tomorrow is giving pleasure to other people.

If a man continually blusters, if he lacks civility, a big stick will not save him from trouble, and neither will speaking softly avail, if back of the softness there does not lie strength, power.

Eternal truths will be neither true nor eternal unless they have fresh meaning for every new social situation.

I have an unshaken conviction that democracy can never be undermined if we maintain our library resources and a national intelligence capable of utilizing them.

Freedom from effort in the present merely means that there has been effort stored up in the past.

The battle for the individual rights of women is one of long standing and none of us should countenance anything which undermines it.

Change means the unknown.

It behooves every man to remember that the work of the critic is of altogether secondary importance, and that, in the end, progress is accomplished by the man who does things.

Germany has reduced savagery to a science, and this great war for the victorious peace of justice must go on until the German cancer is cut clean out of the world body.

The forgotten man at the bottom of the economic pyramid.