Quotes from Franklin D. Roosevelt

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

All of our people all over the country—except the pure-blooded Indians—are immigrants or descendants of immigrants, including even those who came over here on the Mayflower.

We look forward to a world founded upon four essential human freedoms. The first is freedom of speech and expression—everywhere in the world. The second is freedom of every person to worship God in his own way—everywhere in the world. The third is freedom from want… everywhere in the world. The fourth is freedom from fear… anywhere in the world.

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.

No government can help the destinies of people who insist in putting sectional and class consciousness ahead of general weal.

Favor comes because for a brief moment in the great space of human change and progress some general human purpose finds in him a satisfactory embodiment.

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

We must lay hold of the fact that economic laws are not made by nature. They are made by human beings.

Out of this modern civilization economic royalists carved new dynasties…. The royalists of the economic order have conceded that political freedom was the business of the Government, but they have maintained that economic slavery was nobody's business.

Let us never forget that government is ourselves and not an alien power over us. The ultimate rulers of our democracy are not a President and senators and congressmen and government officials, but the voters of this country.

Prosperous farmers mean more employment, more prosperity for the workers and the business men of every industrial area in the whole country.

We continue to recognize the greater ability of some to earn more than others. But we do assert that the ambition of the individual to obtain for him a proper security is an ambition to be preferred to the appetite for great wealth and great power.