Quotes from Franklin D. Roosevelt

We have faith that future generations will know that here, in the middle of the twentieth century, there came a time when men of good will found a way to unite, and produce, and fight to destroy the forces of ignorance, and intolerance, and slavery, and war.

I venture the challenging statement that if American democracy ceases to move forward as a living force, seeking day and night by peaceful means to better the lot of our citizens, fascism will grow in strength in our land.

Confidence... thrives on honesty, on honor, on the sacredness of obligations, on faithful protection and on unselfish performance. Without them it cannot live.

We had to struggle with the old enemies of peace - business and financial monopoly, speculation, reckless banking, class antagonism, sectionalism, war profiteering. They had begun to consider the government of the United States as a mere appendage to their own affairs and we know now that a government by organized money is just as bad as a government by organized mob.

There is a mysterious cycle in human events. To some generations much is given. Of other generations much is expected.

Cooperation, which is the thing we must strive for today, begins where competition leaves off.

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.

If we will not prepare to give all that we have and that all that we are to preserve Christian civilization in our land, we shall go to destruction.

I see one-third of a nation ill housed, ill clad, ill nourished...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 that have too little

People, like charity, begins at home.

One cannot always build the future for our youth, but we can build our youth for the future.

It seems to me to be equally plain that no business which depends for existence on paying less than living wages to its workers has any right to continue in this country. By "business" I mean the whole of commerce as well as the whole of industry; by workers I mean all workers, the white collar class as well as the men in overalls; and by living wages I mean more than a bare subsistence level-I mean the wages of decent living.