Quotes from Franklin D. Roosevelt

If I were asked to state the great objective which Church and State are both demanding for the sake of every man and woman and child in this country, I would say that that great objective is "a more abundant life."

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

Books cannot be killed by fire. People die, but books never die. No man and no force can abolish memory…. In this war, we know, books are weapons.

Selfishness is the only real atheism aspiration, unselfishness, the only real religion.

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

All of our people all over the country—except the pure-blooded Indians—are immigrants or descendants of immigrants, including even those who came over here on the Mayflower.

A program whose basic thesis is not that the system of free private enterprise for profit has failed in this generation, but that it has not yet been tried.

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 its government.

I have said this before, but I shall say it again and again and again: Your boys are not going to be sent into any foreign wars.

We have always known that heedless self-interest was bad morals; we know now that it is bad economics.

More than an end to war, we want an end to the beginnings of all wars.

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.

On this tenth day of June 1940 the hand that held the dagger has struck it into the back of its neighbor.

The school is the last expenditure upon which America should be willing to economize.

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.

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.

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

There is no indispensable man.

I should like to have it said of my first Administration that in it the forces of selfishness and of lust for power met their match. I should like to have it said of my second Administration that in it these forces met their master.

We have learned that we cannot live alone, at peace; that our own well-being is dependent on the well-being of other nations, far away. We have learned that we must live as men, and not as ostriches, nor as dogs in the manger. We have learned to be citizens of the world, members of the human community.

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.

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.

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

If I went to work in a factory the first thing I'd do is join a union.