Franklin D. Roosevelt

Wealth in the modern world does not come merely from individual effort; it results from a combination of individual effort and of the manifold uses to which the community puts that effort.

Enlightened business is learning that competition ought not to cause bad social consequences which inevitably react upon the profits of business itself.

Great accumulations of wealth cannot be justified on the basis of personal and family security. Such accumulations amount to the perpetuation of great and undesirable concentration of control in a relatively few individuals over the employment and welfare of many, many others.

Repetition does not transform a lie into a truth.

No man can occupy the office of President without realizing that he is President of all the people.

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

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 at the command of his head.

There can be no constitutional democracy in any community which denies to the individual his freedom to speak and worship as he wishes.

Government has a continuing responsibility to meet continuing problems.

Men are not prisoners of fate, but only prisoners of their own minds. They have within themselves the power to become free at any moment.

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

New laws, in themselves, do not bring a millennium.

Take a method and try it: If it fails, admit it frankly and try another. But above all, try something.

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

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.

We have nothing to fear but fear itself.

Economic royalists complain that we seek to overthrow the institutions of America. What they really complain of is that we seek to take away their power. Our allegiance to American institutions requires the overthrow of this kind of power.

It seldom helps to wonder how a statesman of one generation would surmount the crisis of another.

Government by organized money is just as dangerous as government by organized mob.

No nation ever loses its dignity or good standing by conciliating its differences and by exercising great patience with, and consideration for, the rights of other nations.