Politicians From New York City

"The peace-loving nations must make a concerted effort in opposition to those violations of treaties and those ignorings of humane instincts which today are creating a state of international anarchy and instability from which there is no escape through mere isolation or neutrality."

"Enlightened business is learning that competition ought not to cause bad social consequences which inevitably react upon the profits of business itself. All but the hopelessly reactionary will agree that to conserve our primary resources of man power, government must have some control over maximum hours, minimum wages, the evil of child labor and the exploitation of unorganized labor."

"A self-supporting and self-respecting democracy can plead no justification for the existence of child labor, no economic reason for chiseling workers' wages or stretching workers' hours."

"We have always known that heedless self-interest was bad morals; we know now that it is bad economics."

"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."

"No man can occupy the office of President without realizing that he is President of all the people."

"The very employers and politicians and publishers who talk most loudly of class antagonism and the destruction of the American system now undermine that system by this attempt to coerce the votes of the wage earners of this country. It is the 1936 version of the old threat to close down the factory or the office if a particular candidate does not win. It is an old strategy of tyrants to delude their victims into fighting their battles for them. Every message in a pay envelope, even if it is the truth, is a command to vote according to the will of the employer. But this propaganda is worse—it is deceit."

"We had to struggle with the old enemies of peace—business and financial monopoly, speculation, reckless banking, class antagonism, sectionalism, war profiteering. They had begun to consider the Government of the United States as a mere appendage to their own affairs. We know now that Government by organized money is just as dangerous as Government by organized mob. Never before in all our history have these forces been so united against one candidate as they stand today. They are unanimous in their hate for me—and I welcome their hatred."

"Let me warn you, and let me warn the nation, against the smooth evasion that says: "Of course we believe these things. We believe in social security. We believe in work for the unemployed. We believe in saving homes. Cross our hearts and hope to die! We believe in all these things. But we do not like the way that the present administration is doing them. Just turn them over to us. We will do all of them, we will do more of them, we will do them better and, most important of all, the doing of them will not cost anybody anything!""

"The true conservative seeks to protect the system of private property and free enterprise by correcting such injustices and inequalities as arise from it. 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. Never has a Nation made greater strides in the safeguarding of democracy than we have made during the past three years. Wise and prudent men — intelligent conservatives — have long known that in a changing world worthy institutions can be conserved only by adjusting them to the changing time. In the words of the great essayist, "The voice of great events is proclaiming to us. Reform if you would preserve." I am that kind of conservative because I am that kind of liberal."

"Desperate in mood, angry at failure, cunning in purpose, individuals and groups are seeking to make Communism an issue in an election where Communism is not a controversy between the two major parties. Here and now, once and for all, let us bury that red herring, and destroy that false issue. You are familiar with my background; you know my heritage; and you are familiar, especially in the State of New York, with my public service extending back over a quarter of a century. For nearly four years I have been President of the United States. A long record has been written. In that record, both in this State and in the national capital, you will find a simple, clear and consistent adherence not only to the letter, but to the spirit of the American form of government."

"The task on our part is twofold: First, as simple patriotism requires, to separate the false from the real issues; and, secondly, with facts and without rancor, to clarify the real problems for the American public. There will be — there are — many false issues. In that respect, this will be no different from other campaigns. Partisans, not willing to face realities, will drag out red herrings as they have always done — to divert attention from the trail of their own weaknesses."

"A dark old world was devastated by wars between conflicting religions. A dark modern world faces wars between conflicting economic and political fanaticisms in which are intertwined race hatreds."

"Many causes produce war. There are ancient hatreds, turbulent frontiers, the "legacy of old forgotten, far-off things, and battles long ago." There are new-born fanaticisms. Convictions on the part of certain peoples that they have become the unique depositories of ultimate truth and right."

"I wish I could keep war from all Nations; but that is beyond my power. I can at least make certain that no act of the United States helps to produce or to promote war. I can at least make clear that the conscience of America revolts against war and that any Nation which provokes war forfeits the sympathy of the people of the United States."

"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 two hundred limping exhausted men come out of line-the survivors of a regiment of one thousand that went forward forty-eight hours before. I have seen children starving. I have seen the agony of mothers and wives. I hate war."

"We are not isolationists except in so far as we seek to isolate ourselves completely from war. Yet we must remember that so long as war exists on earth there will be some danger that even the Nation which most ardently desires peace may be drawn into war."

"Many who have visited me in Washington in the past few months may have been surprised when I have told them that personally and because of my own daily contacts with all manner of difficult situations I am more concerned and less cheerful about international world conditions than about our immediate domestic prospects. I say this to you not as a confirmed pessimist but as one who still hopes that envy, hatred and malice among Nations have reached their peak and will be succeeded by a new tide of peace and good-will."

"There is a mysterious cycle in human events. To some generations much is given. Of other generations much is expected. This generation of Americans has a rendezvous with destiny."

"I found that I could not honestly draw cartoons of attack against Franklin D. Roosevelt such as I had made against Al Smith and other past candidates for the Presidency. All I could do was to be mildly critical of an honorable man, one of such integrity and courage as is rarely found in political affairs. Today I think of Roosevelt's problems as being as vast and formidable as were Lincoln's. I view him as a man holding to his duty as he sees it, while surrounded by national and international chaos, a man who is trying to do his best for his own country and deal as honorably as circumstances will permit in the nation's diplomatic relations with other countries."

"FDR invited the American people in. "We are all in it- all the way. Every single man, woman and child is a partner in the most tremendous undertaking of our American history." Japan had inflicted serious damage and the casualty lists would be long. Seven-day weeks in every war industry would be required. "On the road ahead there lies hard work- grueling work- day and night, every hour and every minute." And sacrifice, which was a "privilege." Japan was allied with the fascist powers of Germany and Italy. FDR called for systematic "grand strategy." A few months later in another fireside chat he asked Americans to pull out a world map to follow along with him as he described why the country needed to fight beyond American's borders. "Your government has unmistakable confidence in your ability to hear the worst, without flinching or losing heart.""

"My wife, Elsa Walsh, who had worked for years as a reporter for The Washington Post and then as a staff writer for The New Yorker, and I spent endless hours sifting through the story of the Trump presidency, talking intensely for the last year. What was the remedy, the course that could have been taken? we asked. Was there a way to do better? Elsa suggested looking at a previous president who wanted to speak directly to the American people, unfiltered through the media, not just during troubling times but during a major crisis. The model was Franklin D. Roosevelt. Over his 12 years as president, FDR gave 30 fireside chats. His aides and the public often clamored for more. FDR said no. It was important to limit his talks to the major events and to make them exceptional. He also said they were hard work, often requiring him to prepare personally for days. The evening radio addresses concerned the toughest issues facing the country. In a calm and reassuring voice, he explained what the problem was, what the government was doing about it, and what was expected of the people. Often the message was grim. Two days after Japan's December 7, 1941 surprise bombing attack on Pearl Harbor, FDR spoke to the nation. "We must share together the bad news and the good news, the defeats and the victories- the changing fortunes of war. So far, the news has been all bad. We have suffered a serious setback." He added, "It will not only be a long war, it will be a hard war." It was a question of survival. "We are now fighting to maintain our right to live among our world neighbors in freedom and common decency.""

"As power accumulates, so do the opportunities to misuse it, and the temptations. And nowhere, in the years beginning with World War II, did power accumulate more rapidly than in the White House. Franklin Roosevelt, for example, not only presided over the biggest military and industrial buildup in American history, projecting the White House into every corner of American economic life; he was the first president in the modern era to function as commander in chief of the Armed Forces in wartime and to achieve recognized status as a world leader- perhaps the world leader, as photos from Casablanca and Yalta suggest. The sight of Roosevelt in his black cape, as he reshaped with Churchill and Stalin the future of the world- a sight carried to millions of Americans by newsreels in the movie palaces of the time, and reinforced by radio broadcasts reaching even more millions- Roosevelt as world statesman gave the presidency itself a new aura of power and importance."

"We, too, as German National Socialists are looking toward America… Roosevelt is carrying out experiments and they are bold. We, too, fear only the possibility that they might fail."

"I think the presidential situation now is such that unless there's a hopeless crisis, and you have a semidictatorship like Roosevelt, then we won't see what we call a great president."

"We shall not soon see his like again. May Almighty God, who has watched over this Republic as it grew from weakness to strength, give us the wisdom to carry on in the way of Franklin D. Roosevelt."

"Tell him to go to hell; I'm for Jimmy Byrnes."

"I must admit Roosevelt's leadership has been very effective and has been responsible for the Americans' advantageous position today."

"There had been little in his background to prepare him for running a war. He had never worn a uniform or received any military education. True, he had served with much enthusiasm in the Navy Department during the first war; but his profession had always been strictly politics. It was a line of work few men were better at, and perhaps because of that, he recognized from the first that victory would depend on unity among the Allies. "The United Nations" was his phrase, and he used it often with great effect. But he also knew that real unity would take some tall doing. Stalin wanted a second front right away; Churchill did not, and there was strong feeling at home for punishing the Japanese first. Roosevelt decided that Stalin would get something close to what he wanted in 1942. It was a second front in Africa instead of Europe, but American soldiers were fighting Germans in less than a year after Pearl Harbor, and there was going to be no American straying from the beat-Germany-first strategy. Furthermore, Franklin Roosevelt seemed to know how to judge men. Whatever he may have lacked for the job of Commander in Chief was more than made up for by the group of men he called on to help him."

"In contrast to the ultimate realization that he was dealing with a formidable enemy in the east, Hitler clung to the end to his preconceived opinion that the troops of the Western countries were poor fighting material. Even the Allied successes in Africa and Italy could not shake his belief that these soldiers would run away at the first serious onslaught. He was convinced that these soldiers would run away from the first serious onslaught. He was convinced that democracy enfeebled a nation. As late as the summer of 1944 he held to his theory that all the ground that had been lost in the West would be quickly reconquered. His opinions on the Western statesmen had a similar bias. He considered Churchill, as he often stated during the situation conferences, an incompetent, alcoholic demagogue. And he asserted in all seriousness that Roosevelt was not a victim of infantile paralysis but of syphilitic paralysis and was therefore mentally unsound. These opinions, too, were indications, of his flight from reality in the last years of his life."

"In their native countries, Roosevelt and Churchill are regarded as examples of wise statesmen. But we, during our jail conversations, were astonished by their constant shortsightedness and even stupidity. How could they, retreating gradually from 1941 to 1945, leave Eastern Europe without any guarantees of independence? How could they abandon the large territories of Saxony and Thuringia in return for such a ridiculous toy as the four-zoned Berlin that, moreover, was later to become their Achille’s heel? And what kind of military or political purpose did they see in giving away hundreds of thousands of armed Soviet citizens (who were unwilling to surrender, whatever the terms) for Stalin to have them killed? It is said that by doing this, that they secured the imminent participation of Stalin in the war against Japan. Already armed with the Atomic bomb, they did pay for Stalin so that he wouldn’t refuse to occupy Manchuria to help Mao Zedong to gain power in China and Kim Il Sung, to get half of Korea!… Oh, misery of political calculation! When later Mikolajczyk was expelled, when the end of Beneš and Masaryk came, Berlin was blocked, Budapest was in flames and turned silent, when ruins fumed in Korea and when the conservatives fled from Suez – didn’t really some of those who had a better memory, recall for instance the episode of giving away the Cossacks?"

"Besides giving me the most interesting job I could possibly imagine, the Women's Trade League brought many wonderful friends into my life. Among them were Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt...No words of mine can praise Franklin D. Roosevelt enough. When he was inaugurated, not only were we in the midst of the great depression with unemployment running into the millions, but we were lagging behind every important European country in providing for unemployment insurance and old-age pensions. In spite of cries of creeping socialism, he moved ahead fearlessly and imaginatively, creating the W.P.A. and establishing Social Security for millions of citizens. Without him it would have taken the country at least fifty years to accomplish the social gains he brought about in his first administration."

"Roosevelt had no illusions about revolution. Mussolini and Stalin seemed to him ‘not mere distant relatives’ but ‘blood brothers.’"

"The model democratic leader of the 20th century was of course Franklin D. Roosevelt. He led the republic successfully through the worst depression of our history and the greatest war of our history."

"As President Franklin Delano Roosevelt reminded us: "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 little.""

"In 1944, in his second-to-last State of the Union speech, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt stated, "We have come to a clear realization of the fact that true individual freedom cannot exist without economic security and independence." He talked about the need to establish a second Bill of Rights, an economic bill of rights for the American people, a set of principles as important as the political freedoms guaranteed by our Constitution. The very first right that Roosevelt listed was: "the right to a useful and remunerative job in the industries or shops or farms or mines of the nation." That profound principle was true in 1944. It is true today. We must create a full-employment economy."

"Einstein, Picasso, Joyce, gave us our keys; the nature of motion reached us from Proust as from the second-run movie; the Hippodrome girls went down into the eternal lake, Lindbergh had conquered time, Roosevelt had at last spoken openly to us of the demon of our house, and he had named it: fear."

"To compensate for their intrinsically weak hand over Poland, both hoped that Stalin would offer cosmetic concessions because he wanted to maintain the alliance. They were right on the latter point but wrong on the former. Poland was a fundamental, even visceral, issue for Stalin and his expectations of a free hand had been fostered by Churchill’s blatant spheres-of-influence approach in Moscow the previous autumn. He could not begin to comprehend the limiting conditions that his democratic partners wished to set on his influence in key countries in Eastern Europe. Their need for some degree of political pluralism and openness in order to persuade domestic opinion made no sense to this ruthless dictator. The misapprehensions at Yalta occurred on both sides, not just in the West. But the failures of implementation were equally important. Both Churchill and Roosevelt oversold the agreements and especially the “spirit” of Yalta when they got home. This would create grave credibility problems for them in the weeks that followed. Churchill’s desperate public hyperbole about trusting Stalin over Poland is particularly remarkable, given his trenchant critique of Chamberlain in 1938. Many were appalled by it at the time, but Churchill repackaged himself as a fierce Cold Warrior with his “Iron Curtain” speech in March 1946, whereas Roosevelt, being dead, could not retrieve his reputation. Yet Stalin overreacted as well. As the Western Allies surged into Germany in March 1945, his fears revived that they were negotiating a separate peace with the Nazis. This would threaten his position in Germany on which—portentously, it now seemed—Churchill had been so uncooperative at Yalta. Stalin knew much more about his Allies than they did about him—thanks to well-placed agents—but, as with the intelligence failures of 1938, interpretation matters as much as information. If Churchill and FDR were seduced by their hopes, Stalin was the victim of his own paranoia."

"The real problems lay not in negotiation but in assumptions. Churchill and Roosevelt—who were right about Hitler from afar—were both captivated by Stalin when they met him in the flesh. Hopeful that the Soviet Union was gradually shedding its revolutionary skin, they saw a man of business with whom they could conduct meaningful negotiation. Both hoped and, to a large extent, believed that he could be trusted. Whenever doubts welled up, particularly for Churchill, he looked into the abyss, recognized that confrontation, let alone war, was “unthinkable,” and pushed on with the search for cooperation. Contrary to French mythology, Yalta was not the moment when the big powers crudely divided Europe. Churchill and FDR were still resisting a stark separate-spheres deal of the sort advocated by George Kennan. Nor was Yalta a sellout of Eastern Europe to the Soviets, as claimed by the Republican right: it was already clear that the Soviet Union would be the predominant influence in Eastern Europe. That had been decided on the battlefields of Russia in 1942–3, by the Allied failure to mount a second front until June 1944, and by the understandings already reached at Teheran in November 1943 and Moscow in October 1944. When they went to Yalta, Churchill and Roosevelt sought only to “ameliorate” Soviet influence."

"Where then should be the verdict today on Yalta? Unlike the summits of September 1938, these were multifaceted negotiations from which each party came away with something. Roosevelt secured his priorities—agreement on the UN and a Soviet pledge to enter the war against Japan. Churchill managed to avoid firm commitments about Poland’s western border, German dismemberment and reparations—the latter to Stalin’s undisguised irritation. The British also secured a larger role for France in postwar Europe than either of their partners wanted. Stalin, for his part, gained acceptance of his main territorial goals in Asia and agreements that seemed to recognize his predominance in Poland. Each of the Big Three left with the belief that the wartime alliance would continue after the war. That indeed had been their major goal for the conference. Building on Teheran in 1943, they hoped to turn summitry into a process. Unlike Chamberlain’s summits, the leaders came to Yalta with detailed briefing books and a body of specialist advisors, including all three foreign ministers, and in many cases they acted on policies already laid down. The deals on prisoners of war, for instance, or Soviet territorial demands in Asia had already been established in outline, while Maisky’s presentation on reparations followed the lines of a report he had drawn up over the winter."

"The greatest thing he accomplished was to make people all over the world feel that he, and therefore our country, actually was concerned about them and was interested in their problems."

"May I say the greatest boon which has come to me in this life was my friendship with this great man, whose interest in the 'forgotten man' was not an empty gesture but the very obsession of his heart and life."

"Franklin Roosevelt was the first President I ever voted for, the first to serve in my lifetime that I regarded as a hero, and the first I ever actually saw; that was in 1936, a campaign parade in Des Moines, where I was working as a radio announcer. What a wave of affection and pride swept through that crowd, as he passed by in an open car—a familiar smile on his lips, jaunty and confident, drawing from us a reservoir of confidence and enthusiasm some of us had forgotten we had in those days, those hard years. He really did convince us that the only thing we had to fear was, as Senator Mitchell has told us, fear itself."

"On the morning of the 11th, Admirals Leahy, King, and Nimitz went to the White House to get the President's approval for the Joint Chiefs' strategic plan and for the command arrangements in the Southwest Pacific. Roosevelt received them in the Oval Office. He was obviously not well. His face was ashen and his hands trembled. Yet he smiled and turned on the Roosevelt charm for his visitors. He listened with attention to the briefing and approved the strategy. He said he was glad to see that the drives were directed toward the China coast, for he was determined to keep China in the war. Roosevelt noted that the plan did not carry through to the actual overthrow of the enemy and reminded his callers that in the Pacific war his objective was the defeat of Japan as soon as the Allies had enough forces. With regard to Manus, Roosevelt said he did not know exactly where it was and it was a matter for the Joint Chiefs to handle. Lunch was served in the office, and afterward Roosevelt brought out a packet of enormous cigars, very dark in color, that Prime Minister Churchill had accidentally left in the White House. The President offered them around, but all his guests, like himself, were cigarette-smokers. Admiral Nimitz said, however, that he'd like to take one to his housemate, Dr. Anderson, who smoke cigars. He'd have the doctor keep it for some special occasion. The President began asking irrelevant questions and making random comments. He was probably getting tired. He asked Nimitz why, after the daring raid on Truk, he had sent his carriers to raid the Marianas. Since Roosevelt prided himself on keeping abreast of the progress of the war, he obviously knew the answer. The question provided an opportunity for Nimitz to end the visit on a light note. Grinning, he said the question reminded him of the case of the elderly, fat hypochondriac who wanted to have his appendix removed. Because of his age and obesity, no local surgeon was willing to perform the operation. At last the hypochondriac obtained the services of an eminent surgeon from out of town, and the appendectomy took place. When he regained consciousness, the patient, anxious about the operation, sent for the surgeon and asked about his condition. "You're doing fine," said the surgeon. "But, doctor," the patient said, "there's something I don't understand, I have a terrible sore throat which I didn't have when I entered the hospital. What causes that?" "Well," said the doctor, "I'll tell you. In view of the circumstances, your case was a very special one, as you know. A big group of my colleagues came to watch the operation. When it was over they gave me such a round of applause that I removed your tonsils as an encore." "So you see, Mr. President," said Nimitz, "that was the way it was. We just hit Tinian and Saipan for an encore." Roosevelt threw back his head and laughed, and the visit was at an end."

"The American Social Hygiene Association fought hard to prohibit condom use in the early part of this century. Social hygienists believed that anyone who risked getting “venereal” diseases should suffer the consequences, including American doughboys ⎯ U.S. soldiers who fought in World War I. The American Expeditionary Forces, as our army was called, were denied the use of condoms, so it is not surprising that by the end of the war our troops had very high rates of sexually transmitted infections. Like most people throughout history, our “boys” were just unable to “just say ‘no’” (Brandt, 1985). The Secretary of the Navy at that time was only one of many military leaders who believed that condom use and other infection prevention methods were immoral and “unchristian.” It was a young Assistant Secretary of the Navy, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who, when his boss was away from the office, decided to help sailors treat infections that they could have otherwise prevented with condoms. FDR ordered the distribution of prophylactic kits that contained chemicals to wash and insert into the penis to treat gonorrhea and syphilis (Brandt, 1985)."

"President Roosevelt was indorsed for a third term, and the delegates paraded around the hall, cheering wildly."

"Franklin Roosevelt was then a member of the state Senate. No one who saw him in those years would have been likely to think of him as a potential President of the U.S.A. I believe that at that time [he] had little, if any, concern about specific social reforms. ...[A]rtificially serious of face, rarely smiling, with an unfortunate habit... of throwing his head up... combined with his prince-nez and great height, gave him the appearance of looking down his nose at most people. ...[T]his habit ...which when he was young and unchastened gave him a slightly supercilious appearance, later had a completely different effect. By 1933, and for the rest of his life, it was a gesture of courage and hope..."

"The main Nazi newspaper Völkischer Beobachter, praised Roosevelt's adoption of National Socialist strains of thought in his economic and social policies, and "foresaw the United States as developing "toward an authoritarian state" ... By the mid-1930's, however, Nazi views of the New Deal and FDR began to change. As FDR grew increasingly alarmed by Hitler's rearmament and Mussolini's expansionism, his public speeches reflected more open disapproval of fascism, as in his speech in Chicago on October 5, 1937, when he called for an international "quarantine of the aggressor nations." Moreover, in response to the pogroms of Kristallnacht in November 1938, Roosevelt publicly stated his outrage to the German government about the manifest mistreatment of German Jews. In response, Nazi propaganda began to label the New Deal a "Jew Deal," and by 1939 the Völkischer Beobachter condemned the United States as a "Jewish Dictatorship"."

"Scholars consistently rank Franklin D. Roosevelt among the greatest presidents in American history and the greatest president of the twentieth century. ... His ranking is based, no doubt, on his successful leadership of the United States during the nation's two great, back-to-back crises of the twentieth century" the Great Depression and World War II."

"Hitler didn't snub me; it was our president who snubbed me. The president didn't even send me a telegram."