Top 86 Roosevelt Did Quotes
#1. Most people today don't feel that Barack Obama is on our side. We sense he's incapable of doing what Roosevelt did, of loving his country so much that he was willing to run great risks in order to advance its cause, to free others from a new Dark Age - and protect our own liberty in the process.
Arthur L. Herman
#2. 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
#3. I had always felt that if there were a serious war I wished to be in a position to explain to my children why I did take part in it, and not why I did not take part in it.
Theodore Roosevelt
#4. I think Eleanor Roosevelt's so popular at Allenswood because it's the first time she is, number one, free. But it's the first time somebody really recognizes her own leadership abilities and her own scholarly abilities.
Blanche Wiesen Cook
#5. As for accomplishments, I just did what I had to do as things came along.
Eleanor Roosevelt
#7. Miss Volker," I said about as politely as I knew how, "do you think you will outlast the rest of these original people?" "I have to," she said. "I made a promise to Eleanor Roosevelt to see them to their graves, and I can't drop dead on the job - so let's get going.
Jack Gantos
#8. 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
#9. No ordinary work done by a man is either as hard or as responsible as the work of a woman who is bringing up a family of small children; for upon her time and strength demands are made not only every hour of the day but often every hour of the night.
Theodore Roosevelt
#10. Pit race against race, religion against religion, prejudice against prejudice. Divide and conquer! We must not let that happen here.
Eleanor Roosevelt
#11. There's nothing to fear but a wide receiver who can run a 100-yard dash in under 10 seconds.
Franklin D. Roosevelt
#12. 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
#13. The farther one gets into the wilderness, the greater is the attraction of its lonely freedom.
Theodore Roosevelt
#14. This freedom of which men speak, for which they fight, seems to some people a perilous thing. It has to be earned at a bitter cost and then - it has to be lived with. For freedom makes a huge requirement of every human being. With freedom comes responsibility.
Eleanor Roosevelt
#15. From the very beginning our people have markedly combined practical capacity for affairs with power of devotion to an ideal. The lack of either quality would have rendered the other of small value.
Theodore Roosevelt
#16. 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
#18. I met senators, diplomats and the President of the United States, Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
Jean Craighead George
#19. For example, a man who might not have enormous charisma, who could be president 40 years ago, and who was a deserving president, I don't know that George Washington would be a president today, I don't know that Abe Lincoln would, I don't know that Roosevelt would.
Sydney Pollack
#20. I am neither bitter nor cynical but I do wish there was less immaturity in political thinking.
Franklin D. Roosevelt
#21. I used to be with a publishing house called Roosevelt Music. A gentleman there told me he had seen Peggy Lee perform Fever in Las Vegas and I found out later she wanted to record it.
Otis Blackwell
#22. If elected, I shall see to it that every man has a square deal, no less and no more.
Theodore Roosevelt
#23. We will have to want peace, want it enough to pay for it, before it becomes an accepted rule.
Eleanor Roosevelt
#24. I think that if the atomic bomb did nothing more, it scared the people to the point where they realized that either they must do something about preventing war or there is a chance that there might be a morning when we would not wake up.
Eleanor Roosevelt
#25. A line from one of my 1997 columns - 'Do one thing every day that scares you' - is now widely attributed to Eleanor Roosevelt, though I have yet to see any evidence that she ever said it and I don't believe she did. She said some things about fear, but not that thing.
Mary Schmich
#26. She [Eleanor Roosevelt]wants a life of her own. Her grandmother could have been a painter. Her grandmother could have done so much more than she did with her life. And Eleanor Roosevelt decides she is going to do everything possible with her life. She's going to live a full life.
Blanche Wiesen Cook
#27. [Remark about Calvin Coolidge she says was erroneously attributed to her:] I do wish he did not look as if he had been weaned on a pickle.
Alice Roosevelt Longworth
#28. I never thought of achievement. I just did what came along for me to do - the thing that gave me the most pleasure.
Eleanor Roosevelt
#29. Boxing, jiu-jitsu, scaling the Matterhorn ... I did cardio before cardio was cool.
Theodore Roosevelt
#30. Nearly all great civilizations that perished did so because they had crystallized, because they were incapable of adapting themselves to new conditions, new methods, new points of view. It is as though people would rather die than change.
Eleanor Roosevelt
#31. 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
#32. Roosevelt's humor was broad, his manner friendly. Of wit there was little; of philosophy, none. What did he possess? Intuition, inspiration, love of adventure.
Emanuel Celler
#33. High School students in America debate why President Roosevelt didn't bomb the rail lines to Hitler's camps. Their children may ask, a generation from now, why the West stared at far clearer satellite images of Kim Jong Il's camps, and did nothing.
Blaine Harden
#34. 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
#35. If everything was in your favor, if you did not have to surmount any great mountains, then you have nothing to be proud of. But if you feel that you have special difficulties, then you must indeed be proud of your achievement.
Eleanor Roosevelt
#36. How did the land of Jefferson, how did the land of King, become the land of hamburgers and raisins that can sing? Roosevelt was cripple, Lincoln was a geek, they'd never get elected, their clothes were never chic.
Don McLean
#37. No lover ever studied every whim of his mistress as I did those of President Roosevelt.
Winston S. Churchill
#38. Harvard coach Bill Reid would later credit Teddy Roosevelt with saving football. But words in a rule book are one thing. Someone had to show the nation a new way to play the game. The Carlisle Indians did that.
Steve Sheinkin
#39. Most of the work that's done in the world gets done by people who weren't feeling all that well at the time that they did it.
Eleanor Roosevelt
#40. I don't think any President ever enjoyed himself more than I did. Moreover, I don't think any ex-President ever enjoyed himself more.
Theodore Roosevelt
#41. You rarely achieve finality. If you did, life would be over, but as you strive new visions open before you, new possibilities for the satisfaction of living.
Eleanor Roosevelt
#42. The fact of the matter is it's very reasonable to ask the wealthiest estates to pay their share. We did that since Teddy Roosevelt, a Republican president.
Chris Van Hollen
#43. As life developed, I faced each problem as it came along. As my activities and work broadened and reached out, I never tried to shirk. I tried never to evade an issue. When I found I had something to do
I just did it.
Eleanor Roosevelt
#44. You, the sons of the pioneers, if you are true to your ancestry, must make your lives as worthy as they made theirs. They sought for true success, and therefore they did not seek ease. They knew that success comes only to those who lead the life of endeavor
Theodore Roosevelt
#45. Under government ownership corruption can flourish just as rankly as under private ownership.
Theodore Roosevelt
#46. 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
#47. 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
#48. Personally I have never been able to understand why the head of a big business, whether it be the Nation, the State or the Army, or Navy should not desire to have very strong and positive people under him.
Theodore Roosevelt
#49. There is a widespread understanding among the people of this nation, and probably among the people of the world, that there is no safety except through the prevention of war.
Eleanor Roosevelt
#50. As Americans, we go forward, in the service of our country, by the will of God.
Franklin D. Roosevelt
#52. Teddy Roosevelt supported a progressive income tax. If I am sitting pretty and you've got a waitress who is making minimum wage plus tips, and I can afford it and she can't, what's the big deal for me to say, 'I'm going to pay a little bit more'? That is neighborliness.
Barack Obama
#53. All privileges based on wealth, and all emnity to honest men merely because they are wealthy, are un-American.
Theodore Roosevelt
#54. Freedom is not a gift which can be enjoyed save by those shown themselves worthy of it.
Theodore Roosevelt
#55. I wonder if one of the penalties of growing older is that you become more and more conscious that nothing is very permanent.
Eleanor Roosevelt
#56. I highly venerate the Masonic Institution, under the fullest persuasion that, when its principles are acknowledged and its laws and precepts obeyed, it comes nearest to the Christian religion, in its moral effects and influence, of any institution with which I am acquainted.
Theodore Roosevelt
#57. Americanism means the virtues of courage, honor, justice, truth, sincerity, and hardihood - the virtues that made America.
Theodore Roosevelt
#58. Eleanor Roosevelt never thought that she was attractive. She never thought that she was really sufficiently appealing. And I think her whole life was a response to her effort to get her mother to pay attention to her, to love her, and to love her as much as she loved her brothers.
Blanche Wiesen Cook
#59. All wars eventually act as boomerangs and the victor suffers as much as the vanquished.
Eleanor Roosevelt
#60. 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
#61. What I have learned from my own experience is that the most important ingredients in a child's education are curiosity, interest, imagination, and a sense of the adventure of life.
Eleanor Roosevelt
#62. 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
#63. There will be some one at the White House whom you will like more than me," Roosevelt had predicted during his final meeting with the press corps, "but not one who will interest you more.
Doris Kearns Goodwin
#64. Avoid the base hypocrisy of condemning in one man what you pass over in silence when committed by another.
Theodore Roosevelt
#66. The forces that tend for evil are great and terrible, but the forces of truth and love and courage and honesty and generosity and sympathy are also stronger than ever before.
Theodore Roosevelt
#67. Roosevelt's declaration that Americans had 'nothing to fear but fear itself' was a glorious piece of inspirational rhetoric and just as gloriously wrong.
Russell Baker
#69. Every child has inside him an aching void for excitement and if we don't fill it with something which is exciting and interesting and good for him, he will fill it with something which is exciting and interesting and which isn't good for him.
Theodore Roosevelt
#70. I think Stalin was afraid of Roosevelt. Whenever Roosevelt spoke, he sort of watched him with a certain awe. He was afraid of Roosevelt's influence in the world.
W. Averell Harriman
#71. We know that enduring peace cannot be bought at the cost of other people's freedom.
Franklin D. Roosevelt
#74. Some men can live up to their loftiest ideals without ever going higher than a basement.
Theodore Roosevelt
#75. Nothing should be permitted to stand in the way of the preservation of the forests, and it is criminal to permit individuals to purchase a little gain for themselves through the destruction of forests when this destruction is fatal to the well-being of the whole country in the future.
Theodore Roosevelt
#77. The best lesson that any people can learn is that there is no patent cure-all which will make the body politic perfect, and that any man who is able glibly to answer every question as to how to deal with the evils of the body politic is at best a foolish visionary and at worst an evil-minded quack.
Theodore Roosevelt
#78. Don't hit at all if it is honorably possible to avoid hitting; but never hit soft!
Theodore Roosevelt
#79. There are a few obvious consequences and perhaps one subtle possibility. One obvious thing is that, to stimulate the economy, President Obama has committed to creating millions of green jobs that will leave a legacy - much as Roosevelt's public works did during the new deal.
Denis Hayes
#80. It either is or ought to be evident to everyone that business has to prosper before anyone can get any benefit from it.
Theodore Roosevelt
#81. Our flag is a proud flag, and it stands for liberty and civilization. Where it has once floated, there must be no return to tyranny.
Theodore Roosevelt
#82. Each generation supposes that the world was simpler for the one before it.
Eleanor Roosevelt
#83. 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
#84. Dating back to Teddy Roosevelt, hunters have been the pillar of conservation in America, doing more than anyone to conserve wildlife and its habitat.
Gale Norton
#85. To divide along the lines of section or caste or creed is un-American.
Theodore Roosevelt
#86. The unforgivable crime is soft hitting. Do not hit at all if it can be avoided, but NEVER hit softly.
Theodore Roosevelt
