Authors
Topics
Lists
Pictures
Resources
More about Franklin D. Roosevelt
Franklin D. Roosevelt -
Government
Quotes
60 Sourced Quotes
View all Franklin D. Roosevelt Quotes
Source
Report...
For too many of us the political equality we once had won was meaningless in the face of economic inequality. A small group had concentrated into their own hands an almost complete control over other people's property, other people's money, other people's labor — other people's lives. For too many of us life was no longer free; liberty no longer real; men could no longer follow the pursuit of happiness.
Against economic tyranny such as this, the American citizen could appeal only to the organized power of government. The collapse of 1929 showed up the despotism for what it was. The election of 1932 was the people's mandate to end it. Under that mandate it is being ended.
Franklin D. Roosevelt
Source
Report...
The peoples of many countries are being taxed to the point of poverty and starvation... to enable governments to engage in a mad race in armaments... This grave menace to the peace of the world is due in no small measure to the uncontrolled activities of the manufacturers and merchants of engines of destruction, and it must be met by the concerted actions of the peoples of all nations.
Franklin D. Roosevelt
Source
Report...
We want a Supreme Court which will do justice under the Constitution - not over it. In our courts we want a government of laws and not of men.
Franklin D. Roosevelt
Source
Report...
We know it because democracy alone, of all forms of government, enlists the full force of men's enlightened will.
Franklin D. Roosevelt
Source
Report...
No government can help the destinies of people who insist in putting sectional and class consciousness ahead of general weal.
Franklin D. Roosevelt
Source
Report...
The United States Constitution has proved itself the most marvelously elastic compilation of rules of government ever written.
Franklin D. Roosevelt
Source
Report...
Our government is based on the belief that a people can be both strong and free, that civilized men need no restraint but that imposed by themselves against abuse of freedom.
Franklin D. Roosevelt
Source
Report...
All Government employees should realize that the process of collective bargaining, as usually understood, cannot be transplanted into the public service,
Franklin D. Roosevelt
Source
Report...
The very nature and purposes of Government make it impossible for administrative officials to represent fully or to bind the employer in mutual discussions with Government employee organizations,
Franklin D. Roosevelt
Source
Report...
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.
Franklin D. Roosevelt
Source
Report...
The task assumes different shapes at different times. Sometimes the threat to popular government comes from political interests, sometimes from economic interests, sometimes we have to beat off all of them together. But the challenge is always the same—whether each generation facing its own circumstances can summon the practical devotion to attain and retain that greatest good for the greatest number which this government of the people was created to ensure.
Franklin D. Roosevelt
Source
Report...
Are we going to take the hands of the federal government completely off any effort to adjust the growing of national crops, and go right straight back to the old principle that every farmer is a lord of his own farm and can do anything he wants, raise anything, any old time, in any quantity, and sell any time he wants?
Franklin D. Roosevelt
Source
Report...
An American Government cannot permit Americans to starve.
Franklin D. Roosevelt
Source
Report...
The function of Government must be to favor no small group at the expense of its duty to protect the rights of personal freedom and of private property of all its citizens.
Franklin D. Roosevelt
Source
Report...
It will be recorded that the distance of Hawaii from Japan makes it obvious that the attack was deliberately planned many days or even weeks ago. During the intervening time the Japanese Government has deliberately sought to deceive the United States by false statements and expressions of hope for continued peace.
Franklin D. Roosevelt
Source
Report...
We are fighting to save a great and precious form of government for ourselves and for the world.
Franklin D. Roosevelt
Source
Report...
Throughout the world, change is the order of the day. In every Nation economic problems, long in the making, have brought crises of many kinds for which the masters of old practice and theory were unprepared. In most Nations social justice, no longer a distant ideal, has become a definite goal, and ancient Governments are beginning to heed the call.
Thus, the American people do not stand alone in the world in their desire for change. We seek it through tested liberal traditions, through processes which retain all of the deep essentials of that republican form of representative government first given to a troubled world by the United States.
Franklin D. Roosevelt
Source
Report...
The real truth of the matter is, as you and I know, that a financial element in the larger centers has owned the Government ever since the days of Andrew Jackson — and I am not wholly excepting the Administration of W. W. The country is going through a repetition of Jackson's fight with the Bank of the United States — only on a far bigger and broader basis.
Franklin D. Roosevelt
Source
Report...
The Congress has understood that under modern conditions government has a continuing responsibility to meet continuing problems, and that Government cannot take a holiday of a year, a month, or even a day just because a few people are tired or frightened by the inescapable pace of this modern world in which we live.
Franklin D. Roosevelt
Source
Report...
There comes a time in the affairs of men when they must prepare to defend not their homes alone but the tenets of faith and humanity on which their churches, their governments and their very foundations are set. The defense of religion, of democracy and of good faith among nations is all the same fight. To save one, we must now make up our minds to save all.
Franklin D. Roosevelt
Source
Report...
To bring about government by oligarchy, masquerading as democracy, it is fundamentally essential that practically all authority and control be centralized in our Federal government... The individual sovereignty of our states must first be destroyed.
Franklin D. Roosevelt
Source
Report...
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
Source
Report...
Yesterday, December 7, 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.
The United States was at peace with that nation, and, at the solicitation of Japan, was still in conversation with its government and its Emperor looking toward the maintenance of peace in the Pacific.
Franklin D. Roosevelt
Source
Report...
You are, I am sure, aware that genuine popular support in the United States is required to carry out any Government policy, foreign or domestic. The American people make up their own minds and no governmental action can change it.
Franklin D. Roosevelt
Source
Report...
It was natural and perhaps human that the privileged princes of these new economic dynasties, thirsting for power, reached out for control over government itself. They created a new despotism and wrapped it in the robes of legal sanction. In its service new mercenaries sought to regiment the people, their labor, and their property. And as a result the average man once more confronts the problem that faced the Minute Man.
Franklin D. Roosevelt
1
2
3
Quote of the day
Joy is like restless day; but peace divine Like quiet night; Lead me, O Lord, — till perfect Day shall shine Through Peace to Light.
Adelaide Anne Procter
Franklin D. Roosevelt
Creative Commons
Born:
January 30, 1882
Died:
April 12, 1945
(aged 63)
More about Franklin D. Roosevelt...
Featured Authors
Lists
Predictions that didn't happen
If it's on the Internet it must be true
Remarkable Last Words (or Near-Last Words)
Picture Quotes
Confucius
Philip James Bailey
Eleanor Roosevelt
Letitia Elizabeth Landon
Popular Topics
life
love
nature
time
god
power
human
mind
work
art
heart
thought
men
day
×
Lib Quotes