Franklin D. Roosevelt: Trending quotes (page 7)

“Repetition does not transform a lie into a truth.”

Franklin D. Roosevelt

Radio address (26 October 1939), as reported in The Baltimore Sun (27 October 1939)
1930s

Truth , Lie

Franklin D. Roosevelt

Advice to his son James on how to make a public speech, as quoted in Basic Public Speaking (1963) by Paul L. Soper, p. 12
Posthumous publications

Sincerity

“The brave and clear platform adopted by this convention, to which I heartily subscribe, sets forth that government in a modern civilization has certain inescapable obligations to its citizens, among which are protection of the family and the home, the establishment of a democracy of opportunity, and aid to those overtaken by disaster.”

Franklin D. Roosevelt

1930s, Speech to the Democratic National Convention (1936)

Family , Democracy , Home

“I have seen war. I have seen war on land and sea. I have seen blood running from the wounded. I have seen men coughing out their gassed lungs. I have seen the dead in the mud. I have seen cities destroyed. I have seen two hundred limping exhausted men come out of line-the survivors of a regiment of one thousand that went forward forty-eight hours before. I have seen children starving. I have seen the agony of mothers and wives. I hate war.”

Franklin D. Roosevelt

1930s, Address at Chautauqua, New York (1936)

Men , Hate , War , Children

“I do not believe in communism any more than you do but there is nothing wrong with the Communists in this country; several of the best friends I have got are Communists.”

Franklin D. Roosevelt

Reported by Representative Martin Dies as having been said in a conversation at the White House, in the Congressional Record (September 22, 1950), vol. 96, Appendix, p. A6832. Reported as "exceedingly dubious" in Paul F. Boller, Jr., Quotemanship: The Use and Abuse of Quotations for Polemical and Other Purposes, chapter 8, p. 361 (1967); Boller goes on to say that "it is most unlikely that FDR would have said anything like it, even flippantly, to the zealous HUAC chairman, though he may have told Dies that he was exaggerating the size of the American communist movement".
Misattributed

Communication , Country

“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.”

Franklin D. Roosevelt

1930s, Address at Madison Square Garden (1936)

Truth , Fight , Country

“Let us first examine that nightmare to many Americans, especially our friends in California, the growing population of Japanese on the Pacific slope. It is undoubtedly true that in the past many thousands of Japanese have legally or otherwise got into the United States, settled here and raised up children who became American citizens. Californians have properly objected on the sound basic ground that Japanese immigrants are not capable of assimilation into the American population. If this had throughout the discussion been made the sole ground for the American attitude all would have been well, and the people of Japan would today understand and accept our decision.

Anyone who has traveled in the Far East knows that the mingling of Asiatic blood with European or American blood produces, in nine cases out of ten, the most unfortunate results. There are throughout the East many thousands of so-called Eurasians—men and women and children partly of Asiatic blood and partly of European or American blood. These Eurasians are, as a common thing, looked down on and despised, both by the European and American who reside there, and by the pure Asiatic who lives there.”

Franklin D. Roosevelt

Editorial for Macon Telegraph, April 30, 1925
1920s

Women , Men , Children , People

“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.”

Franklin D. Roosevelt

Franklin Roosevelt's Statement on the National Industrial Recovery Act (16 June 1933) http://docs.fdrlibrary.marist.edu/odnirast.html
1930s
Source: [Tritch, Teresa, F.D.R. Makes the Case for the Minimum Wage, http://takingnote.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/03/07/f-d-r-makes-the-case-for-the-minimum-wage/, March 7, 2014, New York Times, March 7, 2014]

Men , Business , Dependency , Country

“In politics, nothing happens by accident. If it happens you can bet it was planned that way.”

Franklin D. Roosevelt

There are no records of Roosevelt having made such a statement, and this is most likely a misquotation of the widely reported comment he made in a speech at the Citadel (23 October 1935):
: Yes, we are on our way back — not just by pure chance, my friends, not just by a turn of the wheel, of the cycle. We are coming back more soundly than ever before because we are planning it that way. Don't let anybody tell you differently.
Misattributed

Way

“Philosophy? I am a Christian and a Democrat. That's all.”

Franklin D. Roosevelt

To a reporter who asked him to define this philosophy. Quoted in Alter, Jonathan The Defining Moment: FDR's Hundred Days and the Triumph of Hope https://books.google.com/books?id=ASmlaOHQNawC&pg=PA244&dq=fdr+i+am+a+christian+and+a+democrat&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjDp7WquOjaAhXqxYMKHTFBDTgQ6AEIUDAH#v=onepage&q=fdr%20i%20am%20a%20christian%20and%20a%20democrat&f=false pg. 244
1930s

“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 uses his legs and his hands at the behest — at the command — of his head.”

Franklin D. Roosevelt

Radio Address to the New York Herald Tribune Forum http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=15828 (26 October 1939)
1930s

Learning

“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.”

Franklin D. Roosevelt

1930s, State of the Union address (1935)

Sense , Future , Wealth

“In the days and in the years that are to come we shall work for a just and honorable peace, a durable peace, as today we work and fight for total victory in war. We can and we will achieve such a peace.”

Franklin D. Roosevelt

1940s, Fourth inaugural address (1945)

War , Peace , Victory , Fight

“The work itself will cover a wide field including clearance of slums, which for adequate reasons cannot be undertaken by private capital; in rural housing of several kinds, where, again, private capital is unable to function; in rural electrification; in the reforestation of the great watersheds of the Nation; in an intensified program to prevent soil erosion and to reclaim blighted areas; in improving existing road systems and in constructing national highways designed to handle modern traffic; in the elimination of grade crossings; in the extension and enlargement of the successful work of the Civilian Conservation Corps; in non-Federal works, mostly self-liquidating and highly useful to local divisions of Government; and on many other projects which the Nation needs and cannot afford to neglect.”

Franklin D. Roosevelt

1930s, State of the Union address (1935)

Success , Housing

“There is a mysterious cycle in human events. To some generations much is given. Of other generations much is expected. This generation of Americans has a rendezvous with destiny.”

Franklin D. Roosevelt

1930s, Speech to the Democratic National Convention (1936)

“We have always known that heedless self-interest was bad morals; we know now that it is bad economics.”

Franklin D. Roosevelt

1930s, Second inaugural address (1937)

“We are not isolationists except in so far as we seek to isolate ourselves completely from war. Yet we must remember that so long as war exists on earth there will be some danger that even the Nation which most ardently desires peace may be drawn into war.”

Franklin D. Roosevelt

1930s, Address at Chautauqua, New York (1936)

War , Peace

“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.”

Franklin D. Roosevelt

1930s, First Inaugural Address (1933)

Men

“We know that we still have far to go; that we must more greatly build the security and the opportunity and the knowledge of every citizen, in the measure justified by the resources and the capacity of the land.”

Franklin D. Roosevelt

1940s, Third inaugural address (1941)

Knowledge

“There seems to be no question that [Mussolini] is really interested in what we are doing and I am much interested and deeply impressed by what he has accomplished and by his evidenced honest purpose of restoring Italy.”

Franklin D. Roosevelt

Comment in early 1933 about Benito Mussolini to U.S. Ambassador to Italy Breckinridge Long, as quoted in Three New Deals : Reflections on Roosevelt's America, Mussolini's Italy, and Hitler's Germany, 1933-1939 (2006) by Wolfgang Schivelbusch, p. 31
1930s

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