Franklin Roosevelt Quotes

One of the great creative statesmen of our age was Franklin Roosevelt. He was creative precisely because he preferred experiment to ideology. ~ Robert Kennedy

It is essential for politicians to make a connection with us, as Franklin Roosevelt did, as Teddy Roosevelt did, as John F. Kennedy did, as Ronald Reagan did. ~ Peter Jennings

In Franklin Roosevelt there died the greatest American friend we have ever known - and the greatest champion of freedom who has ever brought help and comfort from the New World to the Old. ~ Winston Churchill

Well, you have to remember that until 1948, when Hubert Humphrey and others forced the Democratic Party to adopt a new policy on civil rights, the Democratic Party was the party of the old solid South. All of the racists, all of the Cottonhead Smith types and so on were Democrats, allies of Franklin Roosevelt - because of their seniority - of all the major committees of the Congress. ~ William A. Rusher

In his State of the Union speech in January 1941, President Franklin Roosevelt declared America's commitment to Four Freedoms in the struggle against Nazi totalitarianism. Among them was the freedom from fear. ~ Robert Dallek

Well, Mr Obama inherited probably the biggest inventory of problems, certainly foreign policy problems, than any American president ever has. I think the entire inventory of problems that he inherited is probably as big overall as any president, certainly since Franklin Roosevelt and maybe, in some cases, worse. ~ Chuck Hagel

The argument that there are just wars often rests on the social system of the nation engaging in war. It is supposed that if a 'liberal' state is at war with a 'totalitarian' state, then the war is justified. The beneficent nature of a government was assumed to give rightness to the wars it wages.

...Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Roosevelt were liberals, which gave credence to their words exalting the two world wars, just as the liberalism of Truman made going into Korea more acceptable and the idealism of Kennedy's New Frontier and Johnson's Great Society gave an early glow of righteousness to the war in Vietnam.

What the experience of Athens suggests is that a nation may be relatively liberal at home and yet totally ruthless abroad. Indeed, it may more easily enlist its population in cruelty to others by pointing to the advantages at home. An entire nation is made into mercenaries, being paid with a bit of democracy at home for participating in the destruction of life abroad. ~ Howard Zinn

One has to say that they [Eleanor and Franklin Roosevelt] were pioneering to some extent. They didn't know that some of the housing projects that they were putting up for the poor were going to turn into crack dens and rapists' bowers and things of that sort, which they have since become. But you can't always foresee the future. I'm sure their intentions were the best. ~ William A. Rusher

Franklin Roosevelt said the test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance to those who have much; it is whether we provide enough to those who have too little. This reconciliation package fails that test as well. ~ Patrick J. Kennedy

The issues are by some geometric number - 100 or 200 or 500 - times more complicated today than we appreciated them to be when Franklin Roosevelt was around. ~ Gaylord Nelson

At the end of our lives, we will not be judged by the highest public office we attained in our lifetime, if that were true the current president (George W. Bush) would hold as much esteem as Franklin Roosevelt in our country, and Nelson Mandela in his. That cannot be the case. Rather, we will each be judged by the mark we've left on others. ~ Elizabeth Edwards

I think Democrats made a mistake running away from liberalism. Liberalism, uh, Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, John and Robert Kennedy - that's what the Democratic party ought to reach for. ~ Theodore C. Sorensen

My liberal friends love to dismiss Reagan. You know, they'll say something like, 'Oh, didn't he, like, only read one-page memos when he was in the White House?' Well, that's just good managerial practice. I mean, Franklin Roosevelt made people write one-page memos. ~ Rick Perlstein

It is difficult to find a reputable American historian who will acknowledge the crude fact that a Franklin Roosevelt, say, wanted to be President merely to wield power, to be famed and to be feared. To learn this simple fact one must wade through a sea of evasions: history as sociology, leaders as teachers, bland benevolence as a motive force, when, finally, power is an end to itself, and the instinctive urge to prevail the most important single human trait, the necessary force without which no city was built, no city destroyed. ~ Gore Vidal

You have never seen greatness in a Presidency; I have. It was a rich kid who you would think had every reason to be a horse's ass - Franklin Roosevelt. He was humane and wise and resourceful. He was called a traitor to his class. ~ Kurt Vonnegut

When he [Franklin Roosevelt] ultimately does not get the Republican Party nomination and decides to start his new Bull Moose Party, he does, for the first time, let black delegates be part of the party from elsewhere in the country. ~ Geoffrey Cowan

Did the fact that Martin Luther King diddled all those women change what he did for his people? Or Franklin Roosevelt? General Eisenhower? Not one whit. Men are men, and gods are for storybooks. And if you've read your Edith Hamilton or Jane Harrison - or the Old Testament, for that matter - you'll know that gods acted like men most of the time, or worse. ~ Greg Iles

The irony, of course, is that not long ago, it was Trump's own ancestors - German American immigrants - who were the demons of the day, as the United States fought two world wars against Germany. The only thing that saved Trump's people from being rounded up and put in camps during World War II, like Japanese American families - as Trump lauded President Franklin Roosevelt for doing - was that their skin color happened to be white. Those who are so eager to stigmatize Muslims today should keep this in mind - next time around it could be them. That's the way these American nativist, "know-nothing" uprisings work. One day it's Catholics who are the reviled aliens, then it's Jewish people, then it's Muslims. If you don't belong to one of these groups, just wait your turn - you could be next in line.
We will always be subjected to these us-versus-them hysteria campaigns as long as people in power seek to divide Americans for their own cynical political purposes - whether it's to whip up war fever, split apart working people, or simply keep the citizenry fearful and easier to manipulate. ~ Arsalan Iftikhar

Well, at the time, we certainly regarded them [Elianor and Franklin Roosevelt] as partners. We did not know what has since come out about the difficulties of their marital life, or the problems that Franklin gave Eleanor and his mother gave Eleanor, in many respects. We didn't know much about that. ~ William A. Rusher

If Obama's vision of the public sector is socialism, then so too were the visions of Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, Dwight Eisenhower, John Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, and Richard Nixon. ~ Jeff Greenfield

The great leaders of the second world war alliance, Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill, understood the twin sides of destruction and salvation. Their war aims were not only to defeat fascism, but to create a world of shared prosperity. ~ Jeffrey Sachs

The people I really most admire are Robert Kennedy and Franklin Roosevelt. If you know someone, it is very hard to revere them. ~ Ken Livingstone

Republican isolationists had certainly tied the hands of every U.S. president, year after year - berating Franklin Roosevelt in particular and his attempts to ready the nation for inevitable attack. ~ Nigel Hamilton

But he [Franklin Roosevelt] specifically prohibits any black participation from the Deep South, something which just infuriates people who'd been his supporters and who'd believed in him and resides that he is just shockingly abandoned the right of the people to rule. It's a pretty horrible story in that respect. ~ Geoffrey Cowan

And he [Franklin Roosevelt] got the votes of every southern white voting state in the country and wouldn't have been elected president once, let alone four times, if he hadn't. Now, at the same time he acquired over the years a reputation for being sympathetic to blacks, and he got their votes, heaven knows. ~ William A. Rusher

Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, others, knew how to lead. They knew how to ask the American people for the right things. ~ John F. Kerry

In 1937, President Franklin Roosevelt reminded us that the Constitution is, and I quote, "a layman's document, not a lawyer's contract." ~ Mike DeWine

I think you have to take the man and say to yourself, [Donald Trump] is someone who wants to occupy the Oval Office, where Franklin Roosevelt, Teddy Roosevelt, Abraham Lincoln, George Washington, and people who were our president, and I don't think it's just a woman's issue. I think it's an issue that should be of concern to all Americans. ~ Hillary Clinton

My recurring nightmare is that someday I will be faced with a panel: Franklin Roosevelt, John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson all of whom will be telling me everything I got wrong about them. I know that Johnson's out there saying, 'Why is it that what you wrote about the Kennedys is twice as long as the book you wrote about me?' ~ Doris Kearns Goodwin

Franklin Roosevelt was very concerned about environmental issues. ~ Gaylord Nelson

Franklin Roosevelt was a great leader. He saw how to use the levers of power to affect change. ~ Pete Du Pont

Director Ken Burns revealed that his next documentary is about Franklin Roosevelt, and it's fourteen hours long ... which sounds like too much, until you realize there's been over thirty hours of TV dedicated to Honey Boo Boo. ~ Jimmy Fallon

Since the emergence of the Republican Party, only two Democratic presidents, Franklin Roosevelt and John Kennedy, have been followed by Democrats, and both FDR and JFK died in office, so their successors ran as incumbents. ~ George Will

I think one of the lessons of the Depression - and this is something that Franklin Roosevelt demonstrated - was that when orthodoxy fails, then you need to try new things. And he was very willing to try unorthodox approaches when the orthodox approach had shown that it was not adequate. ~ Ben Bernanke

The crisis [the Great Depression] discovered a great man in Franklin Roosevelt ... None too soon he has carried America forward to the second stage of democratic realization. His New Deal involves such collective controls of the national business that it would be absurd to call it anything but socialism, were it not for a prejudice lingering on from the old individualist days against that word ... Both Roosevelt and Stalin were attempting to produce a huge, modern, scientifically organized, socialist state, the one out of a warning crisis and the other out of a chaos ... ~ H.G.Wells

For better than thirty years, as a working historian, I have written on leaders I knew, such as Lyndon Johnson, and interviewed intimates of the Kennedy family and many who knew Franklin Roosevelt, a leader perhaps as indispensable in his way as was Lincoln to the social and political direction of the country. After living with the subject ~ Doris Kearns Goodwin

I think Franklin Roosevelt was a lousy president. What he did- which is to impose this great nanny state on America- was a great mistake. ~ Ed Crane

Here lay the political genius of Franklin Roosevelt: that in his own time he knew what were the questions that had to be answered, even though he himself did not always find the full answer. ~ Walter Lippmann

My grandmother had never been very political, and she sure didn't follow high finance. But decades later, she was still repeating her line that she knew two things about Franklin Roosevelt: He made it safe to put money in banks and---she always paused here and smiled---he did a lot of other good things.

And that was my pitch to Congressman Frank. Start with something that people understand, something that solves a problem they can see. Do that, and then they'll have confidence in the work you do to fix the parts they can't see...

Start simple. Fix something people can see. ~ Elizabeth Warren

A mattoid is a miscreant who seeks to elevate himself by destroying society. Examples include the Rothschilds, David Rockefeller, Franklin Roosevelt, Meyer Lansky, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Leo Tolstoy, Alexander Hamilton, and Josef Stalin. Often mattoids are of high intelligence, tainted geniuses, despite their flawed character and lack of any morality. ~ Oliver Cromwell

Fascist intellectuals, such as Ugo Spirito, made the round of conferences preaching the virtues of postcapitalism fascism and in fact tried to nudge the structure in a 'leftist' direction by calling for more collective control and even corporative ownership of the economy. Mussolini looked abroad to find that Franklin Roosevelt was merely seeking to emulate Italy's innovations. ~ Charles S. Maier

Presidents lie all the time. Really great presidents lie. Abraham Lincoln managed to end slavery in America partially by deception. (In an 1858 debate, he flatly insisted that he had no intention of abolishing slavery in states where it was already legal  -  he had to say this in order to slow the tide of secession.) Franklin Roosevelt lied about the U.S. position of neutrality until we entered World War II after the attack on Pearl Harbor. (Though the public and Congress believed his public pledge of impartiality, he was already working in secret with Winston Churchill and selling arms to France.) Ronald Reagan lied about Iran-Contra so much that it now seems like he was honestly confused. Politically, the practice of lying is essential. By the time the Lewinsky story broke, Clinton had already lied about many, many things. (He'd openly lied about his level of commitment to gay rights during the '92 campaign.) The presidency is not a job for an honest man. It's way too complex. If honesty drove the electoral process, Jimmy Carter would have served two terms and the 2008 presidential race would have been a dead heat between Ron Paul and Dennis Kucinich. ~ Chuck Klosterman

No lover ever studied every whim of his mistress as I did those of President Roosevelt. ~ Winston S. Churchill

I think AIDS can be won. I think we can win this fight. It is winnable. But it means behavior change. ~ Franklin Graham

All cats are gray in the dark. ~ Benjamin Franklin

The wolf is the arch type of ravin, the beast of waste and desolation. ~ Theodore Roosevelt

In my opinion, Putin is right on these issues. Obviously, he may be wrong about many things, but he has taken a stand to protect his nation's children from the damaging effects of any gay and lesbian agenda. ~ Franklin Graham

Beware the hobby that eats. ~ Benjamin Franklin

For us is the life of action, of strenuous performance of duty; let us live in the harness, striving mightily; let us rather run the risk of wearing out than rusting out. ~ Theodore Roosevelt

If you ride a horse, sit close and tight, if you ride a man, sit easy and light. ~ Benjamin Franklin

You can learn many things from children. How much patience you have, for instance. ~ Franklin P. Adams

One should always sleep in all of one's guest beds, to make sure that they are comfortable. ~ Eleanor Roosevelt

My refusing to eat meat occasioned inconveniency, and I have been frequently chided for my singularity. But my light repast allows for greater progress, for greater clearness of head and quicker comprehension. ~ Benjamin Franklin

He that is conscious of a stink in his breeches is [suspicious] of every wrinkle in another's nose. ~ Benjamin Franklin

Remember, no one can make you feel inferior without being related to you and repeatedly questioning why you're in nonprofit. ~ Eleanor Roosevelt

It is 32c today, and the only thing keeping me from hanging myself is the small sense of relief I glean from attaching my body to the vents of my delicious cooling piece. It is a stunning unit, exquisite in all its forms, exceptional in its application, and effective in all its functions. I would marry it, if only I knew it would not die on me sometime within the next five years. Appliances, like obedient children or silent extroverts, cannot last forever, and while my unbidden affection kept my other air conditioner alive for the better part of ten years, not all inanimate objects can be fueled by my love. ~ Michelle Franklin

On the sly, scoping for love. ~ Aretha Franklin

One curious feature about political reform is that so many people feel it is "disloyal" to attempt to rectify the abuses in one's own party. And yet it is obvious that political morality is dependent upon the awakened conscience and private morality of the voters. Such "disloyalty" is simply an evidence of loyalty to principle. ~ Eleanor Roosevelt

The stream will not permanently rise higher than the main source; and the main source of national power and national greatness is found in the average citizenship of the nation. Therefore it behooves us to do our best to see that the standard of the average citizen is kept high; and the average cannot be kept high unless the standard of the leaders is very much higher. ~ Theodore Roosevelt

There are always in life countless tendencies for good and for evil, and each succeeding generation sees some of these tendencies strengthened and some weakened; nor is it by any means always, alas! that the tendencies for evil are weakened and those for good strengthened. But during the last few decades there certainly have been some notable changes for good in boy life. The great growth in the love of athletic sports, for instance, while fraught with danger if it becomes one-sided and unhealthy, has beyond all question had an excellent effect in increased manliness. ~ Theodore Roosevelt

Every lynching represents by just so much a loosening of the bands of civilisation; that the spirit of lynching inevitably throws into prominence in the community all the foul and evil creatures who dwell therein. No man can take part in the torture of a human being without having his own moral nature permanently lowered ~ Theodore Roosevelt

Whenever Roosevelt (Theodore) expected a visitor, he sat up late the night before, reading up on the subject in which he knew his guest was particularly interested. For Roosevelt knew, all the leaders royal road to a person's heart is to talk about the things he or she treasures most. ~ Dale Carnegie

On the whole, I wonder'd much how such a man came to be intrusted with so important a business as the conduct of a great army; but, having since seen more of the great world, and the means of obtaining, and motives for giving places, my wonder is diminished. ~ Benjamin Franklin

I do not think I will ever become deadened, because I live in other people's lives, I must admit there are times when it weighs medown because I can't do some of the things I want. ~ Eleanor Roosevelt

The big question about the American depression is not whether war with Germany and Japan ended it. It is why the Depression lasted until that war. From 1929 to 1940, from Hoover to Roosevelt, government intervention helped to make the Depression Great. ~ Amity Shlaes

It is impossible to win the great prizes of life without running risks, and the greatest of all prizes are those connected with the home. ~ Theodore Roosevelt

Beware of little expenses; A small leak will sink a great ship, as Poor Richard says; and again, Who dainties love, shall beggars prove; and moreover, Fools make feasts, and wise men eat them. ~ Benjamin Franklin

It is work and personal worth which make a State great both politically and industrially, and in my estimation they are to be found in largest proportions in the Democratic party. ~ Franklin Knight Lane

It's interesting to me that really one of the first things she [Eleanor Roosevelt]did as First Lady was to collect her father's letters and publish a book called The Letters of My Father, essentially, hunting big game, The Letters of Elliott Roosevelt. And it really was an act of redemption, really one of her first acts of redemption as she entered the White House. She was going to redeem her father's honor. And publishing his letters, reconnecting with her childhood really fortified her to go on into the difficult White House years. ~ Blanche Wiesen Cook

At the outset almost every man is frightened when he goes into action, but that the course to follow is for the man to keep such a grip on himself that he can act just as if he was not frightened. After this is kept up long enough it changes from pretense to reality, and the man does in very fact become fearless by sheer dint of practicing fearlessness when he does not feel it. ~ Theodore Roosevelt

Anyone who thinks must think of the next war as they would of suicide. ~ Eleanor Roosevelt

The United States has tried for years to live down President Franklin D. Roosevelt's order during World War II to move Japanese-Americans on the West Coast to inland detention camps on grounds that they might be disloyal. ~ Helen Thomas

Progress has brought us both unbounded opportunities and unbridled difficulties. Thus, the measure of our civilization will not be that we have done much, but what we have done with that much. 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. The thought of modern industry in the hands of Christian charity is a dream worth dreaming. The thought of industry in the hands of paganism is a nightmare beyond imagining. The choice between the two is upon us. ~ Theodore Roosevelt

Great minds talk about ideas; small minds talk about people ~ Eleanor Roosevelt

Nothing alive can stand still, it goes forward or back. Life is interesting only as long as it is a process of growth; or, to put it another way, we can only grow as long as we are interested. ~ Eleanor Roosevelt

No gains without pains. ~ Benjamin Franklin

When money comes in at the gate, sport flies out at the window. ~ Theodore Roosevelt

Children are unpredictable. You never know what inconsistency they're going to catch you in next. ~ Franklin P. Jones

Human felicity is produced not as much by great pieces of good fortune that seldom happen as by little advantages that occur every day. ~ Benjamin Franklin