Line #14 Quotes/FranklinDRoosevelt


1	!!Quotes by FDR:
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3	->''"This is preeminently the time to speak the truth, the whole truth, frankly and boldly. Nor need we shrink from honestly facing conditions in our country today. This great Nation will endure as it has endured, will revive and will prosper. So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself — nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance. In every dark hour of our national life a leadership of frankness and vigor has met with that understanding and support of the people themselves which is essential to victory."''
4	-->-- First inaugural address, March 4, 1933
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7	->''"In my Inaugural I laid down the simple proposition that nobody is going to starve in this country. 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."''
8	-->-- Statement on the National Industrial Recovery Act, June 16, 1933
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11	->''[[GoodIsNotSoft "Human kindness has never weakened the stamina or softened the fiber of a free people. A nation does not have to be cruel to be tough."]]''
12	-->-- 1935 speech
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15	->''"The hours men and women worked, the wages they received, the conditions of their labor — these had passed beyond the control of the people, and were imposed by this new industrial dictatorship. The savings of the average family, the capital of the small-businessmen, the investments set aside for old age — other people's money — these were tools which the new economic royalty used to dig itself in. Those who tilled the soil no longer reaped the rewards which were their right.''
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18	->''The small measure of their gains was decreed by men in distant cities. Throughout the nation, opportunity was limited by monopoly. Individual initiative was crushed in the cogs of a great machine. The field open for free business was more and more restricted. Private enterprise, indeed, became too private. It became privileged enterprise, not free enterprise."''
19	-->-- Speech to the Democratic National Convention, June 27, 1936
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22	->''"Let me warn you, and let me warn the nation, against the smooth evasion that says: "Of course we believe these things. We believe in social security. We believe in work for the unemployed. We believe in saving homes. Cross our hearts and hope to die! We believe in all these things. But we do not like the way that the present administration is doing them. Just turn them over to us. We will do all of them, we will do more of them, we will do them better and, most important of all, the doing of them will not cost anybody anything!"''
23	-->-- Address at the Democratic National Convention, September 29, 1936
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26	->''"The very employers and politicians and publishers who talk most loudly of class antagonism and the destruction of the American system now undermine that system by this attempt to coerce the votes of the wage earners of this country. It is the 1936 version of the old threat to close down the factory or the office if a particular candidate does not win. It is an old strategy of tyrants to delude their victims into fighting their battles for them. Every message in a pay envelope, even if it is the truth, is a command to vote according to the will of the employer. But this propaganda is worse—it is deceit."''
27	-->-- Address at Madison Square Garden, October 31, 1936
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30	->''"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. We know now that Government by organized money is just as dangerous as Government by organized mob. Never before in all our history have these forces been so united against one candidate as they stand today. They are unanimous in their hate for me — and I welcome their hatred! I should like to have it said of my first Administration that in it the forces of selfishness and of lust for power met their match. I should like to have it said of my second Administration that in it these forces met their master."''
31	-->-- Address at Madison Square Garden, October 31, 1936
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34	->''"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 too little."''
35	-->-- Second inaugural address, January 20, 1937
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38	->''"Unhappy events abroad have retaught us two simple truths about the liberty of a democratic people. The first truth is that the liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than their democratic State itself. That, in its essence, is fascism — ownership of government by an individual, by a group or by any other controlling private power.''
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40	->''The second truth is that the liberty of a democracy is not safe if its business system does not provide employment and produce and distribute goods in such a way as to sustain an acceptable standard of living. Both lessons hit home. Among us today a concentration of private power without equal in history is growing."''
41	-->-- "Simple Truths" message to Congress, April 29, 1938
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44	->''"Freedom to learn is the first necessity of guaranteeing that man himself shall be self-reliant enough to be free. Such things did not need as much emphasis a generation ago, but when the clock of civilization can be turned back by burning libraries, by exiling scientists, artists, musicians, writers and teachers; by disbursing universities, and by censoring news and literature and art; an added burden, an added burden is placed on those countries where the courts of free thought and free learning still burn bright. If the fires of freedom and civil liberties burn low in other lands they must be made brighter in our own. If in other lands the press and books and literature of all kinds are censored, we must redouble our efforts here to keep them free. If in other lands the eternal truths of the past are threatened by intolerance we must provide a safe place for their perpetuation."''
45	-->-- Address to the National Education Association, June 30, 1938
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48	->''"In the future days which we seek to make secure, we look forward to a world founded upon four essential human freedoms.\
49	The first is freedom of speech and expression — everywhere in the world.\
50	The second is freedom of every person to worship God in his own way — everywhere in the world.\
51	The third is freedom from want, which, translated into world terms, means economic understandings which will secure to every nation a healthy peacetime life for its inhabitants — everywhere in the world.\
52	The fourth is freedom from fear, which, translated into world terms, means a world-wide reduction of armaments to such a point and in such a thorough fashion that no nation will be in a position to commit an act of physical aggression against any neighbor — anywhere in the world.\
53	That is no vision of a distant millennium. It is a definite basis for a kind of world attainable in our own time and generation."''
54	-->-- The "Four Freedoms" speech, January 6, 1941
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57	->''"Mr. Vice President, Mr. Speaker, members of the Senate and the House of Representatives: Yesterday, December 7th, 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. [...] I ask that the Congress declare that since the unprovoked and dastardly attack by Japan on Sunday, December 7th, 1941, a state of war has existed between the United States and the Japanese Empire."''
58	-->-- Pearl Harbor speech, December 8, 1941
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61	->''"We can gain no lasting peace if we approach it with suspicion and mistrust or with fear. We can gain it only if we proceed with the understanding, the confidence, and the courage which flow from conviction."''
62	-->-- Inaugural Address, January 20, 1945
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65	->''"I have a terrific pain in the back of my head."''
66	-->-- His last words, April 12, 1945
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70	!!Quotes about FDR:
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72	->''"No matter when this man might have left us, we would have felt that we had suffered an irreplaceable loss... may he have a lasting influence on the hearts and minds of men!"''
73	-->-- '''UsefulNotes/AlbertEinstein''', statement on FDR's death, April 27, 1945
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76	->''"He saved capitalism, whether this is a good thing or not I am not about to betray my sentiments. But he saved it. It could very well have gone under, and those who said, 'He's a traitor to his class' didn't realize he was their savior."''
77	-->-- '''Creator/GoreVidal'''
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80	->''"[[UsefulNotes/GeorgeWBush Bush]] tries to make himself seem like a card-carrying Mace Club member. He's not. The last macho pres. we had was FDR. FDR--a man stricken by polio, stuck in a wheelchair, fighting the Nazis all the while smoking 3 & 1/2 packs a day. ''"The only thing we have to fear is fear itself!"'' Yeah, [[BlackComedy and staircases, of course.]]"''
81	-->--'''Creator/DenisLeary'''
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Context Quotes / FranklinDRoosevelt