Top 350 Franklin D. Roosevelt Quotes (2024 Update)
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251. “If I were starting life over again, I am inclined to think that I would go into the advertising business in preference to almost any other. The general raising of the standards of modern civilization among all groups of people during the past half ce.”

— Franklin D. Roosevelt

252. “We count, in the future as in the past, on the driving power of individual initiative, on the incentive of fair private profit, strengthened of course with the acceptance of those obligations to the public interest which rest upon us all.”

— Franklin D. Roosevelt

253. “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

254. “Sometimes the best way to keep peace in the family is to keep the members of the family apart for awhile.”

— Franklin D. Roosevelt

255. “We have learned the simple truth, as Emerson said that the only way to have a friend is to be one. We can gain no lasting peace if we approach it with suspicion or mistrust or with fear.”

— Franklin D. Roosevelt

256. “We have always known that heedless self interest was bad morals, we now know that it is bad economics.”

— Franklin D. Roosevelt

257. “I am much interested and deeply impressed by what he has accomplished and by his evidenced honest purpose of restoring Italy and seeking to prevent general European trouble.”

— Franklin D. Roosevelt

258. “The truth is found when men are free to pursue it.”

— Franklin D. Roosevelt

259. “Are you laboring under the impression that I read these memoranda of yours? I can’t even lift them.”

— Franklin D. Roosevelt

260. “Not only our future economic soundness but the very soundness of our democratic institutions depends on the determination of our government to give employment to idle men.”

— Franklin D. Roosevelt

261. “This nation asks for action, and action now.”

— Franklin D. Roosevelt

262. “Against naked force the only possible defense is naked force. The aggressor makes the rules for such a war; the defenders have no alternative but matching destruction with more destruction, slaughter with greater slaughter.”

— Franklin D. Roosevelt

263. “I’ve fired my last shot. I think I should have another round in my belt.”

— Franklin D. Roosevelt

264. “It takes a long time to bring the past up to the present.”

— Franklin D. Roosevelt

265. “Employers and employees alike have learned that in union there is strength.”

— Franklin D. Roosevelt

266. “We defend and we build a way of life, not for America alone, but for all mankind.”

— Franklin D. Roosevelt

267. “It is an unfortunate human failing that a full pocketbook often groans more loudly than an empty stomach.”

— Franklin D. Roosevelt

268. “All free peoples are deeply impressed by the courage and steadfastness of the Greek nation.”

— Franklin D. Roosevelt

269. “A wise Government seeks to provide the opportunity through which the best of individual achievement can be obtained, while at the same time it seeks to remove such obstruction, such unfairness as springs from selfish human motives.”

— Franklin D. Roosevelt

270. “A great man left a watchword that we can well repeat: “There is no indispensable man””

— Franklin D. Roosevelt

271. “What I seek is the highest possible batting average.”

— Franklin D. Roosevelt

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

— Franklin D. Roosevelt

273. “In the field of world policy; I would dedicate this nation to the policy of the good neighbor.”

— Franklin D. Roosevelt

274. “It is the purpose of the 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

275. “Man’s desire to be remembered is colossal.”

— Franklin D. Roosevelt

276. “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

277. “Government cannot close its eyes to the pollution of waters, to the erosion of soil, to the slashing of forests any more than it can close its eyes to the need for slum clearance and schools.”

— Franklin D. Roosevelt

278. “The true conservative is the man who has a real concern for injustices and takes thought against the day of reckoning.”

— Franklin D. Roosevelt

279. “Too often in recent history liberal governments have been wrecked on rocks of loose fiscal policy.”

— Franklin D. Roosevelt

280. “I call for effort, courage, sacrifice, devotion. Granting the love of freedom, all of these are possible. And the love of freedom is still fierce and steady in the nation today. June 10, 1940.”

— Franklin D. Roosevelt

281. “Religion, by teaching man his relationship to God, gives the individual a sense of his own dignity and teaches him to respect himself by respecting his neighbors.”

— Franklin D. Roosevelt

282. “Your boys are not going to be sent into any foreign wars.”

— Franklin D. Roosevelt

283. “We must recognize the fundamental rights of man. There can be no true national life in our democracy unless we give unqualified recognition to freedom of religious worship and freedom of education.”

— Franklin D. Roosevelt

284. “Let us never forget that government is ourselves and not an alien power over us.”

— Franklin D. Roosevelt

285. “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

286. “An election cannot give a country a firm sense of direction if it has two or more national parties which merely have different names, but are as alike in their principals and aims as two peas in the same pod.”

— Franklin D. Roosevelt

287. “Failure is not an American habit.”

— Franklin D. Roosevelt

288. “The ultimate victory of tomorrow is democracy, and through democracy with education, for no people in all the world can be kept eternally ignorant or eternally enslaved.”

— Franklin D. Roosevelt

289. “We are fighting to save a great and precious form of government for ourselves and for the world.”

— Franklin D. Roosevelt

290. “In this dedication of a Nation we humbly ask the blessing of God. May he protect each and every one of us. May He guide me in the days to come.”

— Franklin D. Roosevelt

291. “To reach a port we must set sail.”

— Franklin D. Roosevelt

292. “I’ve never been unemployed. I’ve never been very fully employed either.”

— Franklin D. Roosevelt

293. “Beware of that profound enemy of the free enterprise system who pays lip-service to free competition, but also labels every antitrust prosecution as a persecution.”

— Franklin D. Roosevelt

294. “In a democratic nation, power must be linked with responsibility, and obliged to defend and justify itself within the framework of the general good.”

— Franklin D. Roosevelt

295. “It seems to me to be equally plain that no business which depends for existence on paying less than living wages to its workers has any right to continue in this country. By “business” I mean the whole of commerce as well as the whole of industry; by workers I mean all workers, the white collar class as well as the men in overalls; and by living wages I mean more than a bare subsistence level-I mean the wages of decent living.”

— Franklin D. Roosevelt

296. “How many people in the United States do you think will be willing to go to war to free Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania?”

— Franklin D. Roosevelt

297. “Do not confuse objectives with methods. When the nation becomes substantially united in favor of planning the broad objectives of civilization, then true leadership must unite thought behind definite methods.”

— Franklin D. Roosevelt

298. “The overwhelming majority of Americans are possessed of two great qualities a sense of humor and a sense of proportion.”

— Franklin D. Roosevelt

299. “The core of our defense is the faith we have in the institutions we defend.”

— Franklin D. Roosevelt

300. “It has its distinct and insurmountable limitations when applied to public personnel management.”

— Franklin D. Roosevelt