Franklin D. Roosevelt

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 little.

Happiness lies in the joy of achievement and the thrill of creative effort.

The overwhelming majority of Americans are possessed of two great qualities a sense of humor and a sense of proportion.

We continue to recognize the greater ability of some to earn more than others. But we do assert that the ambition of the individual to obtain for him a proper security is an ambition to be preferred to the appetite for great wealth and great power.

No government can help the destinies of people who insist in putting sectional and class consciousness ahead of general weal.

The United States Constitution has proved itself the most marvelously elastic compilation of rules of government ever written.

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 the voters of this country.

There is nothing I love as much as a good fight.

I think we consider too much the good luck of the early bird and not enough the bad luck of the early worm.

A conservative is a man with two perfectly good legs who, however, has never learned how to walk forward.

Not only our future economic soundness but the very soundness of our democratic institutions depends on the determination of our government to give employment to idle men.

Don't forget what I discovered that over ninety percent of all national deficits from 1921 to 1939 were caused by payments for past, present, and future wars.

True individual freedom cannot exist without economic security and independence. People who are hungry and out of a job are the stuff of which dictatorships are made.

The only sure bulwark of continuing liberty is a government strong enough to protect the interests of the people, and a people strong enough and well enough informed to maintain its sovereign control over the goverment.

The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.

Physical strength can never permanently withstand the impact of spiritual force.

No group and no government can properly prescribe precisely what should constitute the body of knowledge with which true education is concerned.

Democracy cannot succeed unless those who express their choice are prepared to choose wisely. The real safeguard of democracy, therefore, is education.

Favor comes because for a brief moment in the great space of human change and progress some general human purpose finds in him a satisfactory embodiment.

Prosperous farmers mean more employment, more prosperity for the workers and the business men of every industrial area in the whole country.