All Quotes

"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.""

"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."

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

"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."

"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?"

"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."

"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."

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

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

"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."

"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, 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."

"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."

"Up to a certain point it is good for us to know that there are people in the world who will give us love and unquestioned loyalty to the limit of their ability. I doubt, however, if it is good for us to feel assured of this without the accompanying obligation of having to justify this devotion by our behavior."

"The most important thing in any relationship is not what you get but what you give."

"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.""

"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.""

"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."

"Oh! I want to put my arms around you, I ache to hold you close. Your ring is a great comfort. I look at it and think she does love me or I wouldn't be wearing it!"

"Do what you feel in your heart to be right — for you'll be criticized anyway. You'll be "damned if you do, and damned if you don't.""

"Understanding is a two-way street."

"It isn't enough to talk about peace. One must believe in it. And it isn't enough to believe in it. One must work at it."

"We have to face the fact that either all of us are going to die together or we are going to learn to live together and if we are to live together we have to talk."

"To me who dreamed so much as a child, who made a dreamworld in which I was the heroine of an unending story, the lives of people around me continued to have a certain storybook quality. I learned something which has stood me in good stead many times — The most important thing in any relationship is not what you get but what you give."

"Life was meant to be lived, and curiosity must be kept alive. One must never, for whatever reason, turn his back on life."

"My husband plunged into work on a speech and I went off to work on an article. Midnight came and bed for all, and all that was said was "good night, sleep well, pleasant dreams, with the new day comes new strength and new thoughts.'"

"I think, at a child's birth, if a mother could ask a fairy godmother to endow it with the most useful gift, that gift should be curiosity."

"When you cease to make a contribution, you begin to die."

"I think that somehow, we learn who we really are and then live with that decision."

"Friendship with oneself is all-important, because without it one cannot be friends with anyone else in the world."

"When will our consciences grow so tender that we will act to prevent human misery rather than avenge it?"

"You get more joy out of the giving to others, and should put a good deal of thought into the happiness you are able to give."

"I think I have a good deal of my Uncle Theodore in me, because I could not, at any age, be content to take my place by the fireside and simply look on."

"On April 12, 1945, Harry S. Truman received an urgent summons from the White House. When he arrived, Eleanor Roosevelt told him, “The President is dead.” Truman asked, “Is there anything I can do for you?” Mrs. Roosevelt responded, “Is there anything we can do for you? For you are the one in trouble now.”"

"I had a rose named after me and I was very flattered. But I was not pleased to read the description in the catalogue: "No good in a bed, but fine against a wall"."

"One's philosophy is not best expressed in words; it is expressed in the choices one makes. In stopping to think through the meaning of what I have learned, there is much that I believe intensely, much I am unsure of. In the long run, we shape our lives and we shape ourselves. The process never ends until we die. And, the choices we make are ultimately our own responsibility."

"One thing life has taught me: if you are interested, you never have to look for new interests. They come to you. … All you need to do is to be curious, receptive, eager for experience. And there's one strange thing: when you are genuinely interested in one thing, it will always lead to something else."

"You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You are able to say to yourself, "I have lived through this horror. I can take the next thing that comes along." … You must do the thing you think you cannot do."

"The right to adequate protection from the economic fears of old age, sickness, accident, and unemployment;"

"The right to a good education."

"Human resources are the most valuable assets the world has. They are all needed desperately."

"All love that has not friendship for its base, Is like a mansion built upon the sand."

"With the enactment of the Income Tax Law of 1913, the Federal Government began to apply effectively the widely accepted principle that taxes should be levied in proportion to ability to pay and in proportion to the benefits received. Income was wisely chosen as the measure of benefits and of ability to pay. This was, and still is, a wholesome guide for national policy. It should be retained as the governing principle of Federal taxation. The use of other forms of taxes is often justifiable, particularly for temporary periods; but taxation according to income is the most effective instrument yet devised to obtain just contribution from those best able to bear it and to avoid placing onerous burdens upon the mass of our people."

"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."

"Wealth in the modern world does not come merely from individual effort; it results from a combination of individual effort and of the manifold uses to which the community puts that effort. The individual does not create the product of his industry with his own hands; he utilizes the many processes and forces of mass production to meet the demands of a national and international market. Therefore, in spite of the great importance in our national life of the efforts and ingenuity of unusual individuals, the people in the mass have inevitably helped to make large fortunes possible. Without mass cooperation great accumulations of wealth would be impossible save by unhealthy speculation. As Andrew Carnegie put it, "Where wealth accrues honorably, the people are always silent partners." Whether it be wealth achieved through the cooperation of the entire community or riches gained by speculation — in either case the ownership of such wealth or riches represents a great public interest and a great ability to pay."

"The desire to provide security for oneself and one's family is natural and wholesome, but it is adequately served by a reasonable inheritance. Great accumulations of wealth cannot be justified on the basis of personal and family security. In the last analysis such accumulations amount to the perpetuation of great and undesirable concentration of control in a relatively few individuals over the employment and welfare of many, many others."

"Social unrest and a deepening sense of unfairness are dangers to our national life which we must minimize by rigorous methods. People know that vast personal incomes come not only through the effort or ability or luck of those who receive them, but also because of the opportunities for advantage which Government itself contributes. Therefore, the duty rests upon the Government to restrict such incomes by very high taxes."

"Furthermore, the drain of a depression upon the reserves of business puts a disproportionate strain upon the modestly capitalized small enterprise. Without such small enterprises our competitive economic society would cease. Size begets monopoly. Moreover, in the aggregate these little businesses furnish the indispensable local basis for those nationwide markets which alone can ensure the success of our mass production industries. Today our smaller corporations are fighting not only for their own local well-being but for that fairly distributed national prosperity which makes large-scale enterprise possible. It seems only equitable, therefore, to adjust our tax system in accordance with economic capacity, advantage and fact. The smaller corporations should not carry burdens beyond their powers; the vast concentrations of capital should be ready to carry burdens commensurate with their powers and their advantages."

"To a great extent the achievements of invention, of mechanical and of artistic creation, must of necessity, and rightly, be individual rather than governmental. It is the self-reliant pioneer in every enterprise who beats the path along which American civilization has marched. Such individual effort is the glory of America."

"The task of Government is that of application and encouragement. 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. Our common life under our various agencies of Government, our laws and our basic Constitution, exist primarily to protect the individual, to cherish his rights and to make clear his just principles."