Franklin Delano Roosevelt

if a government is to be prudent its taxes must produce ample revenues without discouraging enterprise; and if it is to be just it must distribute the burden of taxes equitably.

All work undertaken should be useful — not just for a day, or a year, but useful in the sense that it affords permanent improvement in living conditions or that it creates future new wealth for the Nation.

The Federal Government must and shall quit this business of relief.

The lessons of history, confirmed by the evidence immediately before me, show conclusively that continued dependence upon relief induces a spiritual and moral disintegration fundamentally destructive to the national fibre. To dole out …

We have, however, a clear mandate from the people, that Americans must forswear that conception of the acquisition of wealth which, through excessive profits, creates undue private power over private affairs and, to our misfortune, over …

We find our population suffering from old inequalities, little changed by vast sporadic remedies.

Throughout the world, change is the order of the day.

We have undertaken a new order of things; yet we progress to it under the framework and in the spirit and intent of the American Constitution. We have proceeded throughout the Nation a measurable distance on the road toward this new order.

the only thing we have to fear is fear itself

This is preeminently the time to speak the truth, the whole truth, frankly and boldly.

These dark days will be worth all they cost us if they teach us that our true destiny is not to be ministered unto but to minister to ourselves and to our fellow men.

Happiness lies not in the mere possession of money; it lies in the joy of achievement, in the thrill of creative effort.

The money changers have fled from their high seats in the temple of our civilization. We may now restore that temple to the ancient truths. The measure of the restoration lies in the extent to which we apply social values more noble than …

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

Repetition does not transform a lie into a truth.

A radical is a man with both feet firmly planted — in the air. A conservative is a man with two perfectly good legs who, however, has never learned to walk forward. A reactionary is a somnambulist walking backwards. A liberal is a man who …

Let us not be afraid to help each other — 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 …

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. …

Freedom to learn is the first necessity of guaranteeing that man himself shall be self-reliant enough to be free.

No democracy can long survive which does not accept as fundamental to its very existence the recognition of the rights of its minorities.

Among us today a concentration of private power without equal in history is growing.

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 …

All Government employees should realize that the process of collective bargaining, as usually understood, cannot be transplanted into the public service.

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.