Quotes from Franklin D. Roosevelt

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

In the field of world policy I would dedicate this nation to the policy of the good neighbor.

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

It is not a tax bill but a tax relief bill providing relief not for the needy but for the greedy.

It takes a long time to bring the past up to the present.

I have seen war…. I hate war.

Yesterday, December 7, 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 must lay hold of the fact that economic laws are not made by nature. They are made by human beings.

Out of this modern civilization economic royalists carved new dynasties…. The royalists of the economic order have conceded that political freedom was the business of the Government, but they have maintained that economic slavery was nobody's business.

I see one-third of a nation ill-housed, ill-clad, ill-nourished.

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

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.

Instinctively we recognized a deeper need—the need to find through government the instrument of our united purpose to solve for the individual the ever-rising problems of a complex civilization. Repeated attempts at their solution without the aid of government had left us baffled and bewildered.

Prosperous farmers mean more employment, more prosperity for the workers and the business men of every industrial area in the whole country.

There is nothing I love as much as a good fight.

[On certain political opponents:] They are unanimous in their hatred for me—and I welcome their hatred.

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.

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

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

The American people are quite competent to judge a political party that works both sides of a street.

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.

An election cannot give a country a firm sense of direction if it has two or more national parties which merely have different names, but are as alike in their principals and aims as two peas in the same pod.

As Americans, we go forward, in the service of our country, by the will of God.

Perfectionism, no less than isolationism or imperialism or power politics, may obstruct the paths to international peace. Let us not forget that the retreat to isolationism a quarter of a century ago was started not by a direct attack against international cooperation but against the alleged imperfections of the peace.