Top 350 Franklin D. Roosevelt Quotes (2025 Update)
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301. “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

302. “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

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

— Franklin D. Roosevelt

304. “If we can boondoggle ourselves out of this depression, that word is going to be enshrined in the hearts of the American people for years to come.”

— Franklin D. Roosevelt

305. “Frankly, I do not know how to effect a permanency in American foreign policy.”

— Franklin D. Roosevelt

306. “The liberal party is a party which believes that, as new conditions an problems arise beyond the power of men and women to meet as individuals, it becomes the duty of the government itself to find new remedies with which to meet them.”

— Franklin D. Roosevelt

307. “Our security is not a matter of weapons alone. The arm that wields them must be strong, the eye that guides them clear, the will that directs them indomitable.”

— Franklin D. Roosevelt

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

— Franklin D. Roosevelt

309. “We know that there are chiselers. At the bottom of every case of criticism and obstruction we have found some selfish interest, some private axe to grind.”

— Franklin D. Roosevelt

310. “I have seen children starving. I have seen the agony of mothers and wives. I hate war.”

— Franklin D. Roosevelt

311. “The first truth is that the liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than their democratic state itself. That, in its essence, is fascism – ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power... Among us today a concentration of private power without equal in history is growing.”

— Franklin D. Roosevelt

312. “But while they prate of economic laws, men and women are starving. We must lay hold of the fact that economic laws are not made by nature. They are made by human beings.”

— Franklin D. Roosevelt

313. “There is much to be said against the climate on the coast of British Columbia and Alaska; yet, I believe that the scenery of one good day will compensate the tourists who will go there in increasing numbers.”

— Franklin D. Roosevelt

314. “Buying and selling securities on the Stock Exchange do not start new industries. Big business never starts anything new. It merely absorbs, consolidates and profits at the expense of others.”

— Franklin D. Roosevelt

315. “The American people want their government to act, and not merely to talk, whenever and wherever there is a threat to world peace.”

— Franklin D. Roosevelt

316. “Put two or three men in positions of conflicting authority. This will force them to work at loggerheads, allowing you to be the ultimate arbiter.”

— Franklin D. Roosevelt

317. “The hopes of the Republic cannot forever tolerate either undeserved poverty or self-serving wealth.”

— Franklin D. Roosevelt

318. “I do not look upon these United States as a finished product. We are still in the making.”

— Franklin D. Roosevelt

319. “Liberty requires opportunity to make a living – a living decent according to the standard of the time, a living which gives a man not only enough to live by, but something to live for.”

— Franklin D. Roosevelt

320. “It is a good thing to demand liberty for ourselves and for those who agree with us, but it is a better thing and a rarer thing to give liberty to others who do not agree with us.”

— Franklin D. Roosevelt

321. “But the challenge is always the same whether each generation facing its own circumstances can summon the practical devotion to attain and retain that greatest good for the greatest number which this government of the people was created to ensure.”

— Franklin D. Roosevelt

322. “Those newspapers of the nation which most loudly cried dictatorship against me would have been the first to justify the beginnings of dictatorship by somebody else.”

— Franklin D. Roosevelt

323. “We stand committed to the proposition that freedom is no half-and-half affair. If the average citizen is guaranteed equal opportunity in the polling place, he must have equal opportunity in the market place.”

— Franklin D. Roosevelt

324. “You’ll have to learn that public life takes a lot of sweat; but it doesn’t need to worry you. You won’t always be right, but you mustn’t suffer from being wrong. That’s what kills people like us.”

— Franklin D. Roosevelt

325. “Our national determination to keep free of foreign wars and foreign entanglements cannot prevent us from feeling deep concern when ideals and principles that we have cherished are challenged.”

— Franklin D. Roosevelt

326. “To win this war, we have been forced into a strategic compromise which will most certainly offend the Russians.”

— Franklin D. Roosevelt

327. “We have faith that future generations will know that here, in the middle of the twentieth century, there came a time when men of good will found a way to unite, and produce, and fight to destroy the forces of ignorance, and intolerance, and slavery, and war.”

— Franklin D. Roosevelt

328. “Don’t forget what I discovered that over ninety percent of all national deficits from 1921 to 1939 were caused by payments for past, present, and future wars.”

— Franklin D. Roosevelt

329. “Peace can endure only so long as humanity really insists upon it, and is willing to work for it and sacrifice for it.”

— Franklin D. Roosevelt

330. “A reactionary is a somnambulist walking backwards.”

— Franklin D. Roosevelt

331. “No government can help the destinies of people who insist in putting sectional and class consciousness ahead of general weal.”

— Franklin D. Roosevelt

332. “Preparation for defense is an inalienable prerogative of a sovereign state.”

— Franklin D. Roosevelt

333. “You are, I am sure, aware that genuine popular support in the United States is required to carry out any Government policy, foreign or domestic. The American people make up their own minds and no governmental action can change it.”

— Franklin D. Roosevelt

334. “As Americans, we go forward, in the service of our country, by the will of God.”

— Franklin D. Roosevelt

335. “With Thy blessing, we shall prevail over the unholy forces of our enemy. Help us to conquer the apostles of greed and racial arrogances. Lead us to the saving of our country, and with our sister nations into a world unity that will spell a sure peace – a peace invulnerable to the schemings of unworthy men. And a peace that will let all of men live in freedom, reaping the just rewards of their honest toil.”

— Franklin D. Roosevelt

336. “The driving force of a nation lies in its spiritual purpose, made effective by free, tolerant but unremitting national will.”

— Franklin D. Roosevelt

337. “Our government is based on the belief that a people can be both strong and free, that civilized men need no restraint but that imposed by themselves against abuse of freedom.”

— Franklin D. Roosevelt

338. “No business is above Government; and Government must be empowered to deal adequately with any business that tries to rise above Government.”

— Franklin D. Roosevelt

339. “I tell the American people solemnly that the United States will never survive as a happy and fertile oasis of liberty surrounded by a cruel desert of dictatorship.”

— Franklin D. Roosevelt

340. “No group and no government can properly prescribe precisely what should constitute the body of knowledge with which true education is concerned.”

— Franklin D. Roosevelt

341. “You cannot organize civilization around the core of militarism and at the same time expect reason to control human destinies.”

— Franklin D. Roosevelt

342. “All of us in all the Americas will be living at the point of a gun.”

— Franklin D. Roosevelt

343. “The alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge, natural to party dissension, which in different ages and countries has perpetrated the most horrid enormities, is itself a frightful despotism.”

— Franklin D. Roosevelt

344. “I have seen war. I have seen war on land and sea. I have seen blood running from the wounded. I have seen men coughing out their gassed lungs. I have seen the dead in the mud. I have seen cities destroyed. I have seen 200 limping, exhausted men come out of line – the survivors of a regiment of 1,000 that went forward 48 hours before. I have seen children starving. I have seen the agony of mothers and wives. I hate war.”

— Franklin D. Roosevelt

345. “The essence of our struggle is that men shall be free.”

— Franklin D. Roosevelt

346. “O Lord, give us faith. Give us faith in Thee; faith in our sons; faith in each other; faith in our united crusade. Let not the keeness of our spirit ever be dulled. Let not the impacts of temporary events, of temporal matters of but fleeting moment – let not these deter us in our unconquerable purpose.”

— Franklin D. Roosevelt

347. “Industrial combination is not wrong in itself. The danger lies in taking government into partnership.”

— Franklin D. Roosevelt

348. “To return to higher standards of living we must abandon the false prophets and seek new leaders of our own choosing.”

— Franklin D. Roosevelt

349. “The people of America are in agreement in defending their liberties at any cost, and the first line of that defense lies in the protection of economic security.”

— Franklin D. Roosevelt

350. “The public schools shall be free from sectarian influences and, above all, free from any attitude of hostility to the adherents of any particular creed.”

— Franklin D. Roosevelt