He was the 32nd President of the United States and a central figure in world events during the mid-20th century, leading the United States during a time of worldwide economic crisis and world war. The only American president elected to more than two terms, he facilitated a durable coalition that realigned American politics for decades. Roosevelt dominated the American political scene, not only during the twelve years of his presidency but for decades afterward.
He orchestrated the realignment of voters that created the Fifth Party System. FDR’s New Deal Coalition united labor unions, big city machines, white ethnics, African Americans, and rural white Southerners. Roosevelt’s diplomatic impact also resonated on the world stage long after his death, with the United Nations and Bretton Woods as examples of his administration’s wide-ranging impact. Roosevelt is consistently rated by scholars as one of the top three U.S. Presidents.
(1882 – 1945)
– Franklin D. Roosevelt Quotes –
The only thing we have to fear is fear itself–nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.
~ Franklin D. Roosevelt
The True conservative seeks to protect the system of private property and free enterprise by correcting such injustices and inequalities as arise from it.
~ Franklin D. Roosevelt
The most serious threat to our institutions comes from those who refuse to face the need for change. Liberalism becomes the protection for the far-sighted conservative.
~ Franklin D. Roosevelt
We … would rather die on our feet than live on our knees.
~ Franklin D. Roosevelt
Nobody will ever deprive the American people of the right to vote except the American people themselves — and the only way they could do this is by not voting.
~ Franklin D. Roosevelt
Freedom of speech is of no use to a man who has nothing to say and freedom of worship is of no use to a man who has lost his God.
~ Franklin D. Roosevelt
We must remember that any oppression, any injustice, any hatred, is a wedge designed to attack our civilization.
~ Franklin D. Roosevelt
I do not believe in communism any more than you do but there is nothing wrong with the Communists in this country; several of the best friends I have got are Communists.
~ Franklin D. Roosevelt
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
We have here a human as well as an economic problem. When humane considerations are concerned, Americans give them precedence. The lessons of history, confirmed by the evidence immediately before me, show conclusively that continued dependence upon relief induces a spiritual and moral disintegration fundamentally destructive to the national fibre. To dole out relief in this way is to administer a narcotic, a subtle destroyer of the human spirit.
~ Franklin D. Roosevelt
And while I am talking to you mothers and fathers, I give you one more assurance. I have said this before, but I shall say it again and again and again: Your boys are not going to be sent into any foreign wars.
~ Franklin D. Roosevelt
This is preeminently the time to speak the truth, the whole truth, frankly and boldly.
~ Franklin D. Roosevelt
Freedom to learn is the first necessity of guaranteeing that man himself shall be self-reliant enough to be free.
~ Franklin D. Roosevelt
The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little.
~ Franklin D. Roosevelt
Yes, we are on the way back — not by mere chance, not by a turn of the cycle. We are coming back more soundly than ever before because we planned it that way, and don’t let anybody tell you differently.
~ Franklin D. Roosevelt
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.
~ Franklin D. Roosevelt
We must be the great arsenal of Democracy.
~ Franklin D. Roosevelt
I think we consider too much the good luck of the early bird and not enough the bad luck of the early worm.
~ Franklin D. Roosevelt
Throughout the world, change is the order of the day.
~ Franklin D. Roosevelt
It was natural and perhaps human that the privileged princes of these new economic dynasties, thirsting for power, reached out for control over government itself. They created a new despotism and wrapped it in the robes of legal sanction. In its service new mercenaries sought to regiment the people, their labor, and their property
~ Franklin D. Roosevelt
