I think we consider too much the good luck of the early bird and not enough the bad luck of the early worm. – Franklin D. Roosevelt
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
Not only our future economic soundness but the very soundness of our democratic institutions depends on the determination of our government to give employment to idle men. – Franklin D. Roosevelt
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
The school is the last expenditure upon which America should be willing to economize. – Franklin D. Roosevelt
It is an unfortunate human failing that a full pocketbook often groans more loudly than an empty stomach. – Franklin D. Roosevelt
Art is not a treasure in the past or an importation from another land, but part of the present life of all living and creating peoples. – Franklin D. Roosevelt
Nobody will ever deprive the American people of the right to vote except the American people themselves and the only way they could do this is by not voting. – Franklin D. Roosevelt
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
If civilization is to survive, we must cultivate the science of human relationships – the ability of all peoples, of all kinds, to live together, in the same world at peace. – Franklin D. Roosevelt
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. – Franklin D. Roosevelt
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
Yesterday, December seventh, 1941, a date which will live in infamy, the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan. We will gain the inevitable triumph, so help us God. – Franklin D. Roosevelt
One thing is sure. We have to do something. We have to do the best we know how at the moment… If it doesn’t turn out right, we can modify it as we go along. – Franklin D. Roosevelt
No government can help the destinies of people who insist in putting sectional and class consciousness ahead of general weal. – Franklin D. Roosevelt
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
I believe that in every country the people themselves are more peaceably and liberally inclined than their governments. – Franklin D. Roosevelt
I am neither bitter nor cynical but I do wish there was less immaturity in political thinking. – Franklin D. Roosevelt
More than an end to war, we want an end to the beginning of all wars – yes, an end to this brutal, inhuman and thoroughly impractical method of settling the differences between governments. – Franklin D. Roosevelt
The only sure bulwark of continuing liberty is a government strong enough to protect the interests of the people, and a people strong enough and well enough informed to maintain its sovereign control over the goverment. – Franklin D. Roosevelt