Franklin D. Roosevelt Quotes

Quotes by and about Franklin D. Roosevelt

(Continued from his main entry on the site.)

Roosevelt: "The United States loves peace, but she loves her honor more."

Roosevelt: "High-sounding orators [speak of] the 'brotherhood of man.' [It] is a purely Utopian phrase that means very little."

Roosevelt: "America needs not only an administrator but a leader - a pathfinder, a blazer of the trail."

Roosevelt: "[The U.S.A.] must go forward. We cannot stand like an old lady at the middle of the street crossing without getting hit. ... [We need] courage and faith in ourselves [and] determination."

Roosevelt: "[The] real Americans [are not those from Massachusetts but] those from the west and south."

Roosevelt: "I am not temperamentally fitted to serve in the United States Senate. I do not think that I could endure the atmosphere of that verbose and eminently respectable social club."

Roosevelt: "I sometimes wish I could find some spot on the globe where it was not essential and necessary for me to start something new - a sand bar in the ocean might answer, but I would probably start building a sea wall around it and digging for private treasure in the middle."

Roosevelt: "I hope to God I don't grow reactionary with advancing age."

Roosevelt: "We have gradually and unconsciously built up ... absurd distinctions between those who use a typewriter and those who use a tool. In the early days ... the village craftsman commanded quite as much respect from his neighbors as the village clerk, which is my idea of a real democracy."

Roosevelt: "To rush blindly along the paths proclaimed as highways to Utopia ... would not be progression - it would be only demoralization and the only result would be such suffering and unhappiness to our country as we have witnessed in some of those countries abroad which have tried purely theoretical schemes of Government before they tested their soundness or practicability in small ways."

Roosevelt: "The President of the United States must have a mind not single-tracked, but like a great railroad yard. ... Each and every day in the White House he is confronting tasks with ten wholly [unrelated] problems, presented by ten uncoordinated government departments. [He must be] successful in jumping ... from problem to problem [while] keeping his equilibrium."

Roosevelt: "[Mussolini is an] admirable Italian gentleman."

Adolf Hitler: "[FDR's] readiness for sacrifice and [idea that] discipline should dominate the entire people ... are also the quintessence of [my] state philosophy. ... The public well transcends the interest of the individual."

Benito Mussolini: "[FDR's policies are] reminiscent of fascism. ... [This is seen in] the principle that the state no longer leaves the economy to its own devices."