The future leader of the free world grew up in a privileged home in the state of New York and earned a degree in history at Harvard University. At the age of 23, on St. Patrick’s Day 1905, he married his fifth cousin once removed, Eleanor. Their relative, Theodore Roosevelt, who happened to be president at the time, gave her away. Franklin and Eleanor knew each other practically as long as they had lived; they first met when she was only 2 and he was 4 years old. The two raised five children, losing one as a baby, and Eleanor became an influential, invaluable ally while FDR was in the White House. She encouraged him to hire people like Frances Perkins, the first woman Cabinet member, appeared on his behalf in public and spoke out on humanitarian, racial justice and philanthropic issues. However, FDR cheated on Eleanor several times; she herself was rumored to have a long-term relationship with a female journalist, Lorena Hickok, who even lived at the White House. FDR was governor of New York at the time of the notorious stock market crash of 1929, which put an estimated 25 percent of the population was out of work. When he first ran for president in 1932, he was already pledging a “new deal” to get the country back on track. In his first inaugural address, he told the nation that “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself,” setting a course of action for his presidency. His personal battles with his health primed him for the greater battles of the country, according to his wife. “Franklin’s illness…gave him strength and courage he had not had before. He had to think out the fundamentals of living and learn the greatest of all lessons—infinite patience and never-ending persistence,” she said. FDR had been diagnosed with polio in 1921, and he ultimately became unable to walk without assistance. In 1938, he founded the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis (NFIP) to fight polio; it’s known today as the March of Dimes. The Attack on Pearl Harbor and America’s entry into World War II presented another challenge. For all the strength and leadership Roosevelt showed during the war, he still made grave errors that affect families to this day. In 1942 he signed Executive Order 9066; the order resulted in more than 100,000 people of Japanese descent, including many Japanese-American citizens, being involuntarily relocated into internment camps (including the family of StarTrek actor George Takei). Many relocated people lived in the camps for three or more years. “My childhood incarceration is what I consider my most strongly formative experience,” Takei said in 2021. “I was shaped by that, and that’s why here I am, 84 years old, and still talking about it." Roosevelt did not live to see the end of World War II, as he passed away just 11 weeks into his fourth and final term on April 12, 1945. Today, Roosevelt may not be one of the most remembered U.S. presidents, but thanks in large part to those immortal words he uttered at his first inauguration—“the only thing we have to fear is fear itself”—he’s certainly one of the most quoted. Keep reading for 30 FDR quotes that not only offer a historic look back, but are inspiring enough to show a way forward.
FDR Quotes
- “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.”
- “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."
- “This is preeminently the time to speak the truth, the whole truth, frankly and boldly.”
- “Only a foolish optimist can deny the dark realities of the moment.”
- “In these days of difficulty, we Americans must and shall choose the path of social justice… the path of faith, the path of hope and the path of love toward our fellow man.”
- “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.”
- “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 hands at the behest of his head.”
- “I see one-third of a nation ill-housed, ill-clad, ill-nourished.”
- “Happiness lies not in the mere possession of money; it lies in the joy of achievement, in the thrill of creative effort.”
- “Industrial combination is not wrong in itself. The danger lies in taking government into partnership.”
- “Men and nature must work hand in hand. The throwing out of balance of the resources of nature throws out of balance also the lives of men.”
- “Among American citizens, there should be no forgotten men and no forgotten races.”
- “This generation of Americans has a rendezvous with destiny.”
- “We must scrupulously guard the civil rights and civil liberties of all our citizens, whatever their background. We must remember that any oppression, any injustice, any hatred, is a wedge designed to attack our civilization.”
- “They [who] seek to establish systems of government based on the regimentation of all human beings by a handful of individual rulers…call this a new order. It is not new and it is not order.”
- “I propose to create a Civilian Conservation Corps to be used in simple work…More important, however, than the material gains will be the moral and spiritual value of such work.”
- “I have seen war. I have seen war on land and sea. I have seen blood running from the wounded…I have seen the dead in the mud. I have seen cities destroyed…I have seen children starving. I have seen the agony of mothers and wives. I hate war.”
- “Unless the peace that follows recognizes that the whole world is one neighborhood and does justice to the whole human race, the germs of another world war will remain as a constant threat to mankind.”
- “We must be the great arsenal of democracy.”
- “We have always known that heedless self-interest was bad morals; we know now that it is bad economics.”
- “Freedom of speech…Freedom of worship…Freedom from want…Freedom from fear.”
- “It is time to extend planning to a wider field, in this instance comprehending in one great project many states directly concerned with the basin of one of our greatest rivers.”
- “No country, however rich, can afford the waste of its human resources. Demoralization caused by vast unemployment is our greatest extravagance. Morally, it is the greatest menace to our social order.”
- “We have faith that future generations will know here, in the middle of the twentieth century, there came a time when men of good will found a way to unite, and produce, and fight to destroy the forces of ignorance, and intolerance, and slavery, and war.”
- “The structure of world peace cannot be the work of one man, or one party, or one nation…it must be a peace which rests on the cooperative effort of the whole world.”
- “The only limit to our realization of tomorrow will be our doubts of today. Let us move forward with strong and active faith.”
- “Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the assessment that something else is more important than fear.”
- “Democracy cannot succeed unless those who express their choice are prepared to choose wisely. The real safeguard of democracy, therefore, is education.”
- “More than an end to war, we want an end to the beginnings of all wars.”
- “I ask you to judge me by the enemies I have made.” Next, Does History Shine Brightest on Presidents Who Are Kind?
