Franklin D. Roosevelt

"I have a terrific pain in the back of my head."

"In politics, nothing happens by accident. If it happens you can bet it was planned that way."

"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."

"When you reach the end of your rope, tie a knot in it and hang on."

"Political pundits have a saying that a great leader needs three things: brains, heart, and guts, or its modern variant, balls. Churchill, for example, had all three. Now start doing your own sums: FDR surely had all three; Nixon had brains and guts, but not much heart. Reagan had a good facsimile of a heart, but not much of a brain..."

"In its own way, the House of Representatives showed a similar if less visible pattern of ideological and strategic division among its Southern Democrats. But there the party’s margin over the Republicans was nearly two hundred seats, and with the Democratic right wing small and not well organized, the administration had an easier time getting its program through."

"To a striking degree, the way the United States conducted World War II was a consequence of Roosevelt’s own experience as the assistant secretary of the Navy during World War I—a period that made him appreciate the benefits of overwhelming the enemy with machinery, as well as the risks of ground warfare. When he traveled to France in 1918 to tour the front lines, the battlefield disgusted him. The conditions for soldiers were too crowded, and he wrote in his diary that “the smell of dead horses” offended his “sensitive naval” nose. Instead, he fixated on logistics and material: the deployment of large naval guns, transported on land via train carriages, to batter German lines; a push for rapid advances in aircraft and bomb technology. He promoted a plan to thwart German U-boat attacks by creating a minefield across the entire North Sea rather than putting Allied ships at risk. (The scheme was not complete when the war ended.) Roosevelt’s work during this period also showed him the value of working closely with trusted international partners such as Britain and France. Strong alliances, he came to learn, were how modern wars were won. Unlike many Americans, Roosevelt did not become an isolationist after World War I. He understood that aggressive authoritarian regimes had to be stopped and believed that the U.S. could protect many of its own interests via machinery and alliances. He was so wedded to these two ideas that, during World War II, he provided Britain and the Soviet Union with massive amounts of aid without expecting any repayment. So much better, Roosevelt believed, to strengthen U.S. allies and let them do much of the land fighting. This approach led to one of his greatest successes as a war leader."

"If anything happened to that man ... I couldn't stand it. He is the truest friend; he has the farthest vision; he is the greatest man I have ever known."

"The hands of the president no longer had the sure, firm grasp of earlier years. He was not up to par physically. He complained that he "lacked pep." His sinus condition, for which Ross McIntire gave him daily treatments, failed to improve. At the end of March, McIntire finally got him to go to Bethesda Naval Hospital for a complete medical check. Lieutenant Commander Howard Bruenn, USNR, a cardiologist, presented the grim report. The president suffered from hypertension, failure of the left ventricle of the heart, hypertensive heart disease, and acute bronchitis. At sixty-two, Roosevelt's body was failing him. He could die at any time. With great care, his life might be extended a year or so. But how could the president of the United States in wartime follow a program of rest and limited activity? It couldn't be done."

"[T]he Progressive Party, with its extravagant claims, has, therefore, imposed on itself the considerable burden of proof. The only party within recent memory which made equally strident claims of fellowship were the Communists, who failed to survive this test; and the only politician of similar claims was, of course, Henry Wallace's erstwhile master, Roosevelt, who did not after all, now that the magic of his voice is gone, succeed in raising the darker brother to the status of a citizen. This is the ancestry of the Wallace party, and it does not work wholly in its favor. It operates to give pause to even the most desperate and the most gullible."

"It wasn't a Republican president who locked up thousands of loyal Americans of Japanese descent in concentration camps for years. It was Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt."

"And although some members of Congress charged that Roosevelt was overstepping his legal authority, he was able to win them over by inviting them to the White House for a series of "Fireside Chats" ("Perhaps, Senator, you would better understand these policies if Ernst and Victor moved you even closer to the fire?" "NO! PLEASE!")."

"In Franklin D. Roosevelt's record, four things will stand out above everything else. One, his interest in human beings and their welfare, as is exemplified in the social legislation and which is being carried further to this day. Two, as President of the United States and commander-in-chief of its forces, he became the main factor in winning the greatest war of all time. Three, he brought about the creation of a United Nations, in the framework of which, if the nations so willed it, a peace can be written — a peace which mankind has yearned for over the ages... Four, he gave hope to countless disabled by conquering an affliction which struck him in the prime of his life. ... Because of his interest in Warm Springs and polio, an advancement has been made in the intensive study of that dread disease that may bring relief from it, an accomplishment which in itself is of first importance."

"Popular perception has long suggested that FDR favored the Navy over the Army, but when it came to budgets, deployments, and promotions, he was evenhanded as a commander in chief. On an emotional level, however, Roosevelt's combination inspection-fishing-vacation trips- such as he enjoyed aboard the cruiser Houston- were among his favorite occasions. And his long-standing relationships with the Navy's admirals, particularly the duty-minded Leahy, made him more comfortable having them around. This contrast is underscored by remembering that the Army Chief of Staff from 1930 to 1935 was Douglas MacArthur. The general was still trying to emulate his father's advance up to Missionary Ridge during the Civil War, and his visits to the White House often took on the aura of a state visit. FDR was not intimidated by MacArthur- or anyone else- but neither was he terribly comfortable with him. When MacArthur left Washington for the Philippines and Malin Craig, whom Roosevelt did not know well, became Army Chief of Staff, it was only natural that Roosevelt gravitated toward the loyal and understated Leahy as his chief military adviser."

"President Roosevelt ... told me there was no reason for my worrying about my having been a member of the Ku Klux Klan. He said some of his best friends and supporters he had in the state of Georgia were among members of the organization. He never in any way, by word or attitude, indicated any doubt about my having been in the Klan nor did he indicate any criticism of me for having been a member of that organization."

"Meetings between Roosevelt and the JCS were impromptu and usually convened to deal with a specific problem. The President would decide who would attend, presumably those whom he wanted for advice. The record shows that King was in the White House some thirty-two times during 1942, although there may have been other meetings that were not on the President's appointment calendar. The scheduled appointments then diminished for the remainder of the war: eight in 1943, nine in 1944, and one in 1945. In contrast, Churchill met with the British Chiefs of Staff almost daily."

"Thirty-four years ago a nation groping its uncharted course through the seas of the Great Depression faced the threatening storms of social and economic revolution. The late President Franklin D. Roosevelt met the challenge with the Wagner Act and with other New Deal measures, then considered quite revolutionary, such as Social Security, unemployment insurance, and the Fair Labor Standards Act. While these measures modified the existing capitalistic system somewhat, they also saved the nation for free enterprise. They did not save the farm worker. He was left out of every one of them. The social revolution of the New Deal passed him by. To make our union possible with its larger hope that the farm worker will have his day at last, there was required a new social revolution."

"For us, it remains only to say that in Franklin Roosevelt there died the greatest American friend we have ever known, and the greatest champion of freedom who has ever brought help and comfort from the New World to the Old."

"Meeting Franklin Roosevelt was like opening your first bottle of champagne; knowing him was like drinking it."

"Even though Roosevelt swamped Hoover in the 1932 election, I had great doubts that he would offer a solution to attack the depression and still maintain our American birthright. My misgivings were strengthened when I attended a Democartic dinner in New York City celebrating Roosevelt’s victory. The President-elect offered no indication as to the direction he would lead the country. Nor did he point the way a short time later when I travelled to Warm Springs, Georgia, upon his invitation, to confer with him on his legislative program for the omng Seventy-third Congress. This was in December of 1932, and Roosevelt still talked of balancing the budget and reducing government expenditures. He also stressed as a strict constructionist the conistitutional limitations on the President and on the federal government. His face was tanned and rested and he puffed complacently on his cigarette. I thought it strange that a an who had campaigned as he had throughout the countr would be so out of touch with reality. Over and over again, I insisted that as a starting program we had to reduce taxes drastically and inaugurate federal borrowing for direct relief. “If it was constitutional to spend forty billion dollars in a war,” I said angrily, “isn’t it just as constitutional to spend a little money to relieve the hunger and misery of our citizens?” But the President-elect sat in his shirtsleeves and puffed some more on his cigarette and remained non-committal."

"The success of the bank measure had a great deal to do with restoring national confidence. By his action, Roosevelt steadied the country’s finances. If he had not closed the banks and pushed through the Emergency Banking Act, there is little doubt that as far as money was concerned the country would have collapsed entirely. With this act began the most hectic legislative period in American history. A few days after President Roosevelt was inaugurated, and after I had recovered from the flu, he called me to the White House to discuss his program. I was then on the Senate Finance Committee, the Foreign Relations Committee, the Elections Committee and I was chairman of the Public Buildings and Grounds Committee. At that White House meeting, F.D.R. told me that he was not only interested in recovery measures, but also in long-overdue reforms. The Banking Act was to be just the first bill of a group opening the dam gates to a flood of legislative activities. Our immediate problems were to revive agriculture, business and industry, and save home and farm owners and feed and clothe the unemployed. But at the same time, we would reform the stock market, make better use of our natural resources, increase labor’s bargaining position, fight slums and bring about a social-security system for the aged, handicapped and unemployed. I was delighted now with his determination and leadership."

"America had a fling at National Socialism. Roosevelt was for all administration purposes a dictator, but a benevolent one, and the country loved it."

"He was the first chief executive to fly, to leave the country in wartime, to report to the people by radio, to place a woman in the Cabinet, to write directly to the Emperor of Japan — just because nobody ever had done it before."

"In this nation there is ample room for everyone to profit according to his merit provided he is willing to work. Henceforth our national motto shall be ‘security for all.’ Henceforth our laws will be so written and so executed that financial privileges for the few shall disappear. This is what is meant when [Mr. Roosevelt said: ‘ Among our objectives I place the security of the men, women and children of the Nation first. These words indicate the philosophy which will guide our President during his tenure of office. It is the philosophy of social justice which is about to vanquish the sophistry of greed and of individualism."

"I did a draft not apparent in the final version of Roosevelt's great speech to the Teamster's Union, which seemed as we heard the magnificent delivery of it, the turning point in the [1944] campaign. I can still hear the laughter about Fala (but at Dewey) in the lines FDR sang out at the Statler banquet: "The Republican leaders have not been content to make personal attacks upon me or my wife or my sons they now include my little dog Fala. Unlike the members of my family, Fala resents this. When he learned that the Republican fiction writers had concocted a story that I had left him behind on an Aleutian Island and had sent a destroyer back to find him at a cost to the taxpayer of two or three million dollars his Scotch soul was furious. He has not been the same since. I am accustomed to hearing malicious falsehoods about myself but I think I have a right to object to libelous statements about my dog.""

"It was his genius that he could speak clearly in warm-hearted leadership for us in an American period of difficulty never equalled in the history of our nation."

"It's not that Jackson had a "dark side," as his apologists rationalize and which all human beings have, but rather that Jackson was the Dark Knight in the formation of the United States as a colonialist, imperialist democracy, a dynamic formation that continues to constitute the core of US patriotism. The most revered presidents-Jefferson, Jackson, Lincoln, Wilson, both Roosevelts, Truman, Kennedy, Reagan, Clinton, Obama-have each advanced populist imperialism while gradually increasing inclusion of other groups beyond the core of descendants of old settlers into the ruling mythology. All the presidents after Jackson march in his footsteps. Consciously or not, they refer back to him on what is acceptable, how to reconcile democracy and genocide and characterize it as freedom for the people."

"No matter when this man might have left us, we would have felt that we had suffered an irreplaceable loss... may he have a lasting influence on the hearts and minds of men!"

"A later call on President Roosevelt and Prime Minister Churchill, a guest at the White House, was no more than an informal chat. It had no military significance, but it was the first time I ever had a personal talk with either of these two men. Tobruk, in the African desert, had just fallen to the Germans and the whole Allied world was thrown into gloom. These two leaders, however, showed no signs of pessimism. It was gratifying to note that they were thinking of attack and victory, not of defense and defeat."

"Sometimes, as I have listened to the wise and humane words of the man Franklin Roosevelt, I have thought that he alone, in these past five hideous years, has had the courage and the vision and the skill to try to devise a cure for a sick and dying world. But the measures he is taking require almost super-human effort, for he must fight the virulent hatred of the very rich, and the inertia caused by the white blood corpuscles of the very poor, and the curious indifference of the vast American middle class."

"Roosevelt had four great wartime priorities. The first was to sustain allies—chiefly Great Britain, the Soviet Union, and (less successfully) Nationalist China—because there was no other way to achieve victory; the United States could not fight Germany and Japan alone. The second was to secure allied cooperation in shaping the postwar settlement, for without it there would be little prospect for lasting peace. The third had to with the nature of that settlement. Roosevelt expected his allies to endorse one that would remove the most probable causes of future wars. That meant a new collective security organization with the power to deter and if necessary punish aggression, as well as a revived global economic system equipped to prevent a new economic depression. Finally, the settlement would have to be “sellable” to the American people: F.D.R. was not about to repeat Wilson’s mistake of taking the nation beyond where it was prepared to go. There would be no reversion to isolationism, then, after World War II. But the United States would not be prepared either—any more than the Soviet Union would be—to accept a postwar world that resembled its prewar predecessor."

"The greatest Democratic President of the 20th century, and in my judgment the greatest President of the 20th century."

"No Republican here should kid themselves about it. The greatest leaders in fighting for an integrated America in the 20th century were in the Democratic Party. The fact is, it was the liberal wing of the Democratic Party that ended segregation. The fact is that it was Franklin Delano Roosevelt who gave hope to a Nation that was in distress and could have slid into dictatorship. Every Republican has much to learn from studying what the Democrats did right."

"One looks for some sort of wisdom in how others have contemplated fear. There's the gung-ho of Franklin D. Roosevelt's inaugural address back in 1933. Was it Hitler's rise to power, so distantly European, he had in mind when he pronounced 'Let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.' Sounds hollow now, after new forms of human extermination we've discovered for ourselves since then."

"That a great many southern conservatives feared and detested Roosevelt and the New Deal is well known; there was a definite but abortive movement in 1944 to bolt the ticket, for instance in South Carolina; the idea was that a split vote might throw the election into the House of Representatives. But when election day came Roosevelt carried South Carolina by fifteen to one. People may have loathed him; but to vote against him meant cutting their own throats. (In Texas, however, the revolt, although unsuccessful, did become concrete and actual.) Roosevelt on his side attempted famously to purge some southern senators, like George of Georgia; he too was unsuccessful. A final extraordinary point is that Roosevelt would have won in 1944, and also in his earlier campaigns, even if the solid South had voted solidly against him. The South, despite its hatred of the New Deal, gave tremendous majorities to Roosevelt; but on the basis of electoral college figures it had no responsibility whatever for electing him."

"Hitler's triumph made terribly clear the danger of our earlier notions, as well as the very stark differences between a fascist regime and "bourgeois democracy" as represented by someone like Franklin Delano Roosevelt. By the mid-1930s the issue of anti-fascism permeated all our mass work. In countries like France and Spain where big socialist movements existed, Communists sought to unite the Left into antifascist united fronts. In the United States we sought to work with the socialists, and we also began to reevaluate our earlier, highly critical assessment of the New Deal."

"I have just come from America, where I saw Roosevelt. Make no mistake, he is a force — a man of superior and impenetrable mind, but perfectly ruthless — a highly versatile mind which you cannot foresee. He has the most amazing power complex, the Mussolini substance, the stuff of a dictator absolutely."

"Franklin Roosevelt was the champion of the aged and of children and of the handicapped and of the farmer, of those who had been forgotten, of those who had not been remembered, of those who needed a helping hand, of those who needed a good neighbor. The basic force in all of this was not his party or his intellect, but it was his spirit, a spirit which he breathed into our party, a spirit which we carry on today. [Applause.] It was not the spirit of condescension; it was the spirit of compassion. It was the compassion of a man who had suffered deeply himself, and through his own suffering had identified himself with the needs of his fellow men and women in this country. It was the compassion of a man who was never poor but who held a helping hand out to his needy Americans."

"Franklin Roosevelt knew who had been omitted and ignored, and he knew who had omitted and ignored them, and he set about to help the forgotten man, to light the farms, to help the aged, to protect the worker, to open new doors to the Negroes, to care for the needs of millions of Americans in thousands of different ways. He was challenged on every front by those who said he was destroying the country, by those who said he would bankrupt it those who fought the New Deal as they fight progress in 1960. But can anyone in this country who now lives, whatever party they may be a member of, can they imagine America without the accomplishments of the New Deal, of social security, of care for the aged, of protection for bank deposits, protection for investments, of help for the farmers, development of our natural resources? Can they image an America without all these things being done, not easily but over opposition, reluctantly, but moving this country steadily forward? That was his great accomplishment and that was the spirit which he breathed into our party as Thomas Jefferson did when he founded it."

"We have undertaken a new order of things; yet we progress to it under the framework and in the spirit and intent of the American Constitution. We have proceeded throughout the Nation a measurable distance on the road toward this new order."

"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."

"Let us first examine that nightmare to many Americans, especially our friends in California, the growing population of Japanese on the Pacific slope. It is undoubtedly true that in the past many thousands of Japanese have legally or otherwise got into the United States, settled here and raised up children who became American citizens. Californians have properly objected on the sound basic ground that Japanese immigrants are not capable of assimilation into the American population. If this had throughout the discussion been made the sole ground for the American attitude all would have been well, and the people of Japan would today understand and accept our decision. Anyone who has traveled in the Far East knows that the mingling of Asiatic blood with European or American blood produces, in nine cases out of ten, the most unfortunate results. There are throughout the East many thousands of so-called Eurasians—men and women and children partly of Asiatic blood and partly of European or American blood. These Eurasians are, as a common thing, looked down on and despised, both by the European and American who reside there, and by the pure Asiatic who lives there."

"During this Depression, when the spirit of the people is lower than at any other time, it is a splendid thing that for just 15 cents an American can go to a movie and look at the smiling face of a baby, and forget his troubles."

"The United States Constitution has proven itself the most marvelously elastic compilation of rules of government ever written."

"The country needs and, unless I mistake its temper, the country demands bold, persistent experimentation. It is common sense to take a method and try it: If it fails, admit it frankly and try another. But above all, try something. The millions who are in want will not stand by silently forever while the things to satisfy their needs are within easy reach. We need enthusiasm, imagination and the ability to face facts, even unpleasant ones, bravely. We need to correct, by drastic means if necessary, the faults in our economic system from which we now suffer. We need the courage of the young. Yours is not the task of making your way in the world, but the task of remaking the world which you will find before you. May every one of us be granted the courage, the faith and the vision to give the best that is in us to that remaking!"

"I pledge you, I pledge myself, to a new deal for the American people."

"My friends, judge me by the enemies I have made."

"I accuse the present Administration of being the greatest spending Administration in peacetime in all American history — one which piled bureau on bureau, commission on commission, and has failed to anticipate the dire needs or reduced earning power of the people. Bureaus and bureaucrats have been retained at the expense of the taxpayer. We are spending altogether too much money for government services which are neither practical nor necessary. In addition to this, we are attempting too many functions and we need a simplification of what the Federal government is giving the people.""

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

"Let me make it clear that I do not assert that a President and the Congress must on all points agree with each other at all times. Many times in history there has been complete disagreement between the two branches of the Government, and in these disagreements sometimes the Congress has won and sometimes the President has won. But during the Administration of the present President we have had neither agreement nor a clear-cut battle."