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Quote#Politics & Power

Governments can err, presidents do make mistakes, but the immortal…

Quote byFranklin Delano Roosevelt · 1882–1945

Commonly attributed — not confirmed in an authoritative edition. Cited on Wikiquote to: Speech to the Democratic National Convention (1936).

English (original)

Governments can err, presidents do make mistakes, but the immortal Dante tells us that Divine justice weighs the sins of the cold-blooded and the sins of the warm-hearted on different scales. Better the occasional faults of a government that lives in a spirit of charity than the consistent omissions of a government frozen in the ice of its own indifference.

— Franklin Delano Roosevelt

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