Franklin D. Roosevelt

“The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.”

“Dear Sallie: I am very sorry you have a cold and you are in bed. I played with Mary today for a little while. I hope by tomorrow you will be able to be up. I am glad today [sic] that my cold is better. Your loving, Franklin D. Roosevelt.”

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

“Competition has been shown to be useful up to a certain point and no further, but cooperation, which is the thing we must strive for today, begins where competition leaves off.”

“During this Depression, when the spirit of the people is lower than at any other time, it is a splendid thing that for just 15 cents an American can go to a movie and look at the smiling face of a baby, and forget his troubles.”

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

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

“My friends, judge me by the enemies I have made.”

“I regard reduction in Federal spending as one of the most important issues in this campaign. In my opinion it is the most direct and effective contribution that Government can make to business.”

“I'm just afraid that I may not have the strength to do this job. After you leave me tonight, Jimmy, I am going to pray. I am going to pray that God will help me, that he will give me the strength and the guidance to do this job and to do it right. I hope that you will pray for me, too, Jimmy.”

“If I prove a bad president, I will also likely to prove the last president.”

“There seems to be no question that [Mussolini] is really interested in what we are doing and I am much interested and deeply impressed by what he has accomplished and by his evidenced honest purpose of restoring Italy.”

“If the country is to flourish, capital must be invested in enterprise. But those who seek to draw upon other people's money must be wholly candid regarding the facts on which the investor's judgment is asked.”

“Philosophy? I am a Christian and a Democrat. That's all.”

“This new generation, for example, is not content with preachings against that vile form of collective murder — lynch law-which has broken out in our midst anew. We know that it is murder, and a deliberate and definite disobedience of the Commandment, "Thou shalt not kill." We do not excuse those in high places or in low who condone lynch law.”

“I don't mind telling you in confidence that I am keeping in fairly close touch with that admirable Italian gentleman.”

“I know at the same time that you will be sympathetic to the point of view that public psychology, and for that matter, individual psychology, cannot, because of human weakness, be attuned for long periods of time to a constant repetition of the highest note on the scale.”

“I hope your committee will not permit doubts as to constitutionality, however reasonable, to block the suggested legislation.”

“Yes, we are on our way back — not just by pure chance, my friends, not just by a turn of the wheel, of the cycle. We are coming back more soundly than ever before because we are planning it that way. Don't let anybody tell you differently.”

“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.”

“The Nation that destroys its soil destroys itself.”

“No democracy can long survive which does not accept as fundamental to its very existence the recognition of the rights of its minorities.”

“Let us not be afraid to help each other — 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.”

“A radical is a man with both feet firmly planted — in the air. A conservative is a man with two perfectly good legs who, however, has never learned to walk forward. A reactionary is a somnambulist walking backwards. A liberal is a man who uses his legs and his hands at the behest — at the command — of his head.”

“Repetition does not transform a lie into a truth.”

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

“The money changers have fled from their high seats in the temple of our civilization. We may now restore that temple to the ancient truths. The measure of the restoration lies in the extent to which we apply social values more noble than mere monetary profit.”

“Happiness lies not in the mere possession of money; it lies in the joy of achievement, in the thrill of creative effort.”

“These dark days will be worth all they cost us if they teach us that our true destiny is not to be ministered unto but to minister to ourselves and to our fellow men.”

“We have undertaken a new order of things; yet we progress to it under the framework and in the spirit and intent of the American Constitution. We have proceeded throughout the Nation a measurable distance on the road toward this new order.”

“All work undertaken should be useful — not just for a day, or a year, but useful in the sense that it affords permanent improvement in living conditions or that it creates future new wealth for the Nation.”