Quotes By 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.

I ask you to judge me by the enemies I have made.

If you treat people right they will treat you right... ninety percent of the time.

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.

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.

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

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

The only limit to our realization of tomorrow will be our doubts of today.

When you see a rattlesnake poised to strike, you do not wait until he has struck to crush him.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

To reach a port, we must sail - sail, not tie at anchor - sail, not drift.

I think we consider too much the good luck of the early bird and not enough the bad luck of the early worm.

Be sincere; be brief; be seated.

Confidence... thrives on honesty, on honor, on the sacredness of obligations, on faithful protection and on unselfish performance. Without them it cannot live.

We must lay hold of the fact that economic laws are not made by nature. They are made by human beings.

There are as many opinions as there are experts.

Human kindness has never weakened the stamina or softened the fiber of a free people. A nation does not have to be cruel to be tough.

In our personal ambitions we are individualists. But in our seeking for economic and political progress as a nation, we all go up or else all go down as one people.

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

When you get to the end of your rope, tie a knot and hang on.

War is a contagion.

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.

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.

Here is my principle: Taxes shall be levied according to ability to pay. That is the only American principle.

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.

This generation of Americans has a rendezvous with destiny.