Top 350 Franklin D. Roosevelt Quotes (2024 Update)
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51. “The real safeguard of democracy is education.”

— Franklin D. Roosevelt

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

— Franklin D. Roosevelt

53. “We must especially beware of that small group of selfish men who would clip the wings of the American Eagle in order to feather their own nests.”

— Franklin D. Roosevelt

54. “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

55. “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

56. “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

57. “Freedom of conscience, of education, of speech, of assembly are among the very fundamentals of democracy and all of them would be nullified should freedom of the press ever be successfully challenged.”

— Franklin D. Roosevelt

58. “No man can tame a tiger into a kitten by stroking it.”

— Franklin D. Roosevelt

59. “The principle on which this country was founded and by which it has always been governed is that Americanism is a matter of the mind and heart; Americanism is not, and never was, a matter of race or ancestry.”

— Franklin D. Roosevelt

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

— Franklin D. Roosevelt

61. “When peace has been broken anywhere, the peace of all countries is in danger.”

— Franklin D. Roosevelt

62. “Do something. If it works, do more of it. If it doesn’t, do something else.”

— Franklin D. Roosevelt

63. “We have nothing to fear but missing our massage appointment time.”

— Franklin D. Roosevelt

64. “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.”

— Franklin D. Roosevelt

65. “Peace, like charity, begins at home.”

— Franklin D. Roosevelt

66. “We had to struggle with the old enemies of peace – business and financial monopoly, speculation, reckless banking, class antagonism, sectionalism, war profiteering.”

— Franklin D. Roosevelt

67. “Peace, like war, can succeed only where there is a will to enforce it, and where there is available power to enforce it.”

— Franklin D. Roosevelt

68. “I have loved to the point of madness; that which is called madness, that which to me, is the only sensible way to love.”

— Franklin D. Roosevelt

69. “We know now that government by organized money is just as dangerous as government by organized mob.”

— Franklin D. Roosevelt

70. “Self-interest is the enemy of all true affection.”

— Franklin D. Roosevelt

71. “Taxes, after all, are dues that we pay for the privileges of membership in an organized society.”

— Franklin D. Roosevelt

72. “Tell that to the Marines!”

— Franklin D. Roosevelt

73. “There is nothing to fear but fear itself.”

— Franklin D. Roosevelt

74. “To carry adequate life insurance is a moral obligation incumbent upon the great majority of citizens.”

— Franklin D. Roosevelt

75. “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

76. “Inquisitiveness is the most useful talent.”

— Franklin D. Roosevelt

77. “The ablest man I ever met is the man you think you are.”

— Franklin D. Roosevelt

78. “Yesterday, December seventh, 1941, a date which will live in infamy, the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan. We will gain the inevitable triumph, so help us God.”

— Franklin D. Roosevelt

79. “The virtues are lost in self-interest as rivers are lost in the sea.”

— Franklin D. Roosevelt

80. “Democracy, the practice of self-government, is a covenant among free men to respect the rights and liberties of their fellows.”

— Franklin D. Roosevelt

81. “The first twelve years are the hardest.”

— Franklin D. Roosevelt

82. “We are a nation of many nationalities, many races, many religions-bound together by a single unity, the unity of freedom and equality. Whoever seeks to set one nationality against another, seeks to degrade all nationalities.”

— Franklin D. Roosevelt

83. “We may make mistakes-but they must never be mistakes which result from faintness of heart or abandonment of moral principle.”

— Franklin D. Roosevelt

84. “The forgotten man at the bottom of the economic pyramid.”

— Franklin D. Roosevelt

85. “Happiness is not merely money, which is fun for effort and achievement.”

— Franklin D. Roosevelt

86. “Every time an artist dies, part of the vision of mankind passes with him.”

— Franklin D. Roosevelt

87. “Remember you are just an extra in everyone else’s play.”

— Franklin D. Roosevelt

88. “They fight not for the lust of conquest. They fight to end conquest. They fight to liberate.”

— Franklin D. Roosevelt

89. “Change is like fire- if uncontrolled, it will consume us.”

— Franklin D. Roosevelt

90. “The value of love will always be stronger than the value of hate. Any nation or group of nations which employs hatred eventually is torn to pieces by hatred...”

— Franklin D. Roosevelt

91. “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

92. “A good leader can’t get too far ahead of his followers.”

— Franklin D. Roosevelt

93. “It is a terrible thing to look over your shoulder when you are trying to lead – and find no one there.”

— Franklin D. Roosevelt

94. “I consider it a public duty to answer falsifications with facts. I will not pretend that I find this an unpleasant duty. I am an old campaigner, and I love a good fight.”

— Franklin D. Roosevelt

95. “Better the occasional faults of a government that lives in a spirit of charity than the consistent omissions of a government frozen in the ice of its own indifference.”

— Franklin D. Roosevelt

96. “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.”

— Franklin D. Roosevelt

97. “A conservative is a man with two perfectly good legs who, however, has never learned how to walk forward.”

— Franklin D. Roosevelt

98. “A smooth sea never a skilled sailor made.”

— Franklin D. Roosevelt

99. “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

100. “Democracy alone, of all forms of government, enlists the full force of men’s enlightened will.”

— Franklin D. Roosevelt