Top 100 Quotes About Franklin Roosevelt
#1. 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
#2. I was born during the Depression in a little community just outside Waco, and I grew up listening to Franklin Roosevelt on the radio.
Ann Richards
#3. My aspirations for this country would be on the scope of what Franklin Roosevelt brought to this country in 1932 when he saw a nation that was broken economically.
Dennis Kucinich
#4. 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
#5. Franklin Roosevelt was a great leader. He saw how to use the levers of power to affect change.
Pete Du Pont
#6. One of the great creative statesmen of our age was Franklin Roosevelt. He was creative precisely because he preferred experiment to ideology.
Robert Kennedy
#7. I have a strong memory of the day I was told that my father had a weak heart and that he had to go to the hospital. He died when I was nine years old on the same day that Franklin Roosevelt died; it was his 45th birthday.
Alan J. Heeger
#8. It's easy to kick somebody when they're down. George W. Bush has dealt with more difficult issues than any president since Franklin Roosevelt. And I've told my colleagues it's time that we go stand up for the president.
John Boehner
#9. 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
#10. 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
#11. 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
#12. Ronald Reagan is clearly to television what Franklin Roosevelt was to radio.
David Gergen
#13. 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
#14. Meeting Franklin Roosevelt was like opening your first bottle of champagne; knowing him was like drinking it.
Winston S. Churchill
#15. 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
#16. The United States and Saudi Arabia have an extraordinary relationship and friendship that dates back to Franklin Roosevelt.
Barack Obama
#17. 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
#18. George Washington sets the nation on its democratic path. Abraham Lincoln preserves it. Franklin Roosevelt sees the nation through depression and war.
Robert Dallek
#19. 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
#20. 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
#21. 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
#22. Since Franklin Roosevelt's leadership in setting up the United Nations and the Nuremberg trials, the U.S. has promoted universal legal norms and the institutions to enforce them while seeking, by hook or by crook, to exempt American citizens, especially soldiers, from their actual application.
Michael Ignatieff
#23. When the stock market crashed, Franklin Roosevelt got on the television and didn't just talk about the princes of greed. He said, 'Look, here's what happened.
Joe Biden
#24. 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
#25. We can see beyond the present shadows of war in the Middle East to a new world order where the strong work together to deter and stop aggression. This was precisely Franklin Roosevelt's and Winston Churchill's vision for peace for the post-war period.
Dick Gephardt
#26. Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, others, knew how to lead. They knew how to ask the American people for the right things.
John F. Kerry
#27. I am a huge admirer of Franklin Roosevelt's, and I believe social security has done untold good in alleviating the once-widespread issue of poverty among the elderly. FDR believed in the greatness and generosity of Americans - but he was also a cold-blooded politician.
Jon Meacham
#28. Franklin Roosevelt had to govern at a time of crisis. If you're going to make changes in the way a nation thinks, you have to have the ability to take the crisis of the moment and use it to shape an agenda.
Pete Du Pont
#29. Franklin Roosevelt was very concerned about environmental issues.
Gaylord Nelson
#30. Few expected very much of Franklin Roosevelt on Inauguration Day in 1933. Like Barack Obama seventy-six years later, he was succeeding a failed Republican president, and Americans had voted for change. What that change might be Roosevelt never clearly said, probably because he himself didn't know.
Russell Baker
#31. 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
#32. 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
#33. During the 1937 congressional election campaign, Johnson's group probably paid $5,000 to Elliott Roosevelt, one of Franklin Roosevelt's sons, for a telegram in which Elliott suggested that the Roosevelt family favored Lyndon Johnson.
Robert Dallek
#34. 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
#35. 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
#36. 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
#37. 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
#38. 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
#39. 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
#40. A world turned into a stereotype, a society converted into a regiment, a life translated into a routine, make it difficult for either art or artists to survive. Crush individuality in society and you crush art as well. Nourish the conditions of a free life and you nourish the arts, too.
Franklin D. Roosevelt
#41. Taxation according to income is the most effective instrument yet devised to obtain just contribution from those best able to bear it and to avoid placing onerous burdens upon the mass of our people.
Franklin D. Roosevelt
#42. As Americans, we go forward, in the service of our country, by the will of God.
Franklin D. Roosevelt
#43. The function of Government must be to favor no small group at the expense of its duty to protect the rights of personal freedom and of private property of all its citizens.
Franklin D. Roosevelt
#44. Goods produced under conditions which do not meet a rudimentary standard to decency should be regarded as contraband and not allowed to pollute the channels of international commerce.
Franklin D. Roosevelt
#45. 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.
Franklin D. Roosevelt
#46. The traditional Jeffersonian principle of religious freedom was so broadly democratic that it included the right to have no religion at all - it gave to the individual the right to worship any God he chose or no god.
Franklin D. Roosevelt
#47. We know that enduring peace cannot be bought at the cost of other people's freedom.
Franklin D. Roosevelt
#49. I am neither bitter nor cynical but I do wish there was less immaturity in political thinking.
Franklin D. Roosevelt
#50. I met senators, diplomats and the President of the United States, Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
Jean Craighead George
#52. The name 'United Nations' was Franklin D. Roosevelt's idea. He rushed to tell Winston Churchill, who was towelling himself stark naked in his bathroom.
John Lloyd
#53. There's nothing to fear but a wide receiver who can run a 100-yard dash in under 10 seconds.
Franklin D. Roosevelt
#55. No democracy can long survive which does not accept as fundamental to its very existence the recognition of the rights of minorities.
Franklin D. Roosevelt
#56. Franklin [D. Roosevelt] had a good way of simplifying things. He made people feel that he had a real understanding of things and they felt they had about the same understanding.
Eleanor Roosevelt
#58. It was now December 7, 1941; the date that Franklin D. Roosevelt was destined to declare would live in infamy.
Randall Wallace
#60. We have always held to the hope, the belief, the conviction that there is a better life, a better world, beyond the horizon.
Franklin D. Roosevelt
#61. A serf-supporting and self-respecting democracy can plead no justification for the existence of child labor, no economic reason for chiseling workers' wages or stretching workers' hours.
Franklin D. Roosevelt
#62. We cannot always build the future for our youth, but we can build our youth for the future.
Franklin D. Roosevelt
#63. We have always known that heedless self interest was bad morals, we now know that it is bad economics.
Franklin D. Roosevelt
#64. In time of this grave national danger, when all excess income should go to win the war, no American citizen ought to have a net income, after he has paid his taxes, of more than $25,000 a year.
Franklin D. Roosevelt
#65. The Nazi danger to our Western world has long ceased to be a mere possibility. The danger is here now
not only from a military enemy but from an enemy of all law, all liberty, all morality, all religion.
Franklin D. Roosevelt
#66. All safe deposit boxes in banks or financial institutions have been sealed ... and may only be opened in the presence of an agent of the I.R.S.
Franklin D. Roosevelt
#69. I never forget that I live in a house owned by all the American people and that I have been given their trust.
Franklin D. Roosevelt
#70. We should honor Franklin Delano Roosevelt today as the greatest commander in chief of the Armed Forces of the United States in our history, bar none - including President Lincoln.
Nigel Hamilton
#71. I see an America whose rivers and valleys and lakes hills and streams and plains the mountains over our land and nature's wealth deep under the earth are protected as the rightful heritage of all the people.
Franklin D. Roosevelt
#72. The most difficult place in the world to get a clear and open perspective of the country as a whole is Washington.
Franklin D. Roosevelt
#76. Franklin D. Roosevelt is no crusader. He is no tribune of the people. He is no enemy of entrenched privilege. He is a pleasant man who, without any important qualifications for the office, would very much like to be President.
Walter Lippmann
#78. In this country kings or dukes don't amount to nothing. The greatest man around then was Franklin D. Roosevelt, and he was the President; so I started calling Lester the President. It got shortened to Pres.
Billie Holiday
#79. Modern civilization has become so complex and the lives of civilized men so interwoven with the lives of other men in other countries as to make it impossible to be in this world and not of it.
Franklin D. Roosevelt
#80. Wise and prudent men and intelligent conservatives have long known that in a changing world worthy institutions can be conserved only by adjusting them to the changing time.
Franklin D. Roosevelt
#81. My own special relationship with America began at an early age. My father, a fellow journalist, named me after Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
Lionel Barber
#82. The driving force of a nation lies in its spiritual purpose, made effective by free, tolerant but unremitting national will.
Franklin D. Roosevelt
#83. 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.
Franklin D. Roosevelt
#85. You'll have to learn that public life takes a lot of sweat. But it doesn't need to worry you. You won't always be right, but you musn't suffer from being wrong.
Franklin D. Roosevelt
#86. Some people can never understand that you have to wait, even for the best of things, until the right time comes.
Franklin D. Roosevelt
#87. We now realize as we have never before our interdependence on each other; that we cannot merely take, but we must be willing to sacrifice for the good of a common discipline, because without such discipline, no progress is made, no leadership becomes effective.
Franklin D. Roosevelt
#88. Once you've spent two years trying to wiggle one toe, everything is in proportion.
Franklin D. Roosevelt
#90. Coming to grips with the reality that our planet is not the only one harboring intelligent life the universe.
Franklin D. Roosevelt
#91. In truth, every American administration since that of Franklin D. Roosevelt has maintained close ties with the Saudi rulers, and for a single, simple reason: oil.
Michael Mandelbaum
#92. You sometimes find something good in the lunatic fringe. In fact, we have got as part of our social and economic government today a whole lot of things which in my boyhood were considered lunatic fringe, and yet they are now part of everyday life.
Franklin D. Roosevelt
#93. The promise of Social Security was reflected in President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's inter-generational compact that rewards hard work and provides retirement security.
Christine Pelosi
#94. It is the purpose of government to see that not only the legitimate interests of the few are protected but that the welfare and rights of the many are conserved.
Franklin D. Roosevelt
#95. Freedom of the press is essential to the preservation of a democracy; but there is a difference between freedom and license. Editorialists who tell downright lies in order to advance their own agendas do more to discredit the press than all the censors in the world.
Franklin D. Roosevelt
#98. As a nation we may take pride in the fact that we are softhearted; but we cannot afford to be soft-headed
Franklin D. Roosevelt
#100. Freedom of speech ... Freedom of worship ... Freedom from want ... Freedom from fear.
Franklin D. Roosevelt
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