159 quotes
The right of every farmer to raise and sell his products at a return which will give him and his family a decent living
State of the Union Address — Second Bill of Rights (1944)
The right of every family to a decent home
State of the Union Address — Second Bill of Rights (1944)
Confidence... thrives on honesty, on honor, on the sacredness of obligations, on faithful protection and on unselfish performance. Without them it cannot live.
Several centuries ago the greatest writer in history described the two most menacing clouds that hang over human government and human society as "malice domestic and fierce foreign war."
Address at San Diego Exposition (1935)
A self-supporting and self-respecting democracy can plead no justification for the existence of child labor, no economic reason for chiseling workers' wages or stretching workers' hours.
Message to Congress on establishing minimum wages and maximum hours (1937)
We shall strive for perfection. We shall not achieve it immediately — but we still shall strive. We may make mistakes — but they must never be mistakes which result from faintness of heart or abandonment of moral principle.
Fourth inaugural address (1945)
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.
This country seeks no conquest. We have no imperial designs. From day to day and year to year, we are establishing a more perfect assurance of peace with our neighbors.
Address at San Diego Exposition (1935)
If the country is to flourish, capital must be invested in enterprise. But those who seek to draw upon other people's money must be wholly candid regarding the facts on which the investor's judgment is asked.
True individual freedom cannot exist without economic security and independence. "Necessitous men are not free men." ... we must be prepared to move forward, in the implementation of these rights, to new goals of human happiness and well-being.
The right to a useful and remunerative job in the industries or shops or farms or mines of the nation
State of the Union Address — Second Bill of Rights (1944)
The right to adequate protection from the economic fears of old age, sickness, accident, and unemployment
State of the Union Address — Second Bill of Rights (1944)
The right to earn enough to provide adequate food and clothing and recreation
State of the Union Address — Second Bill of Rights (1944)
Philosophy? I am a Christian and a Democrat. That's all.
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.
On this day - this American holiday - we are celebrating the rights of free laboring men and women. The preservation of these rights is vitally important now, not only to us who enjoy them - but to the whole future of Christian civilisation.
We have faith that future generations will know that 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.
Under modern conditions government has a continuing responsibility to meet continuing problems and Government cannot take a holiday of a year, a month, or even a day just because a few people are tired or frightened by the inescapable pace of this modern world in which we live.
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.
Without the body and the mind, as all men know, the Nation could not live. But if the spirit of America were killed, even though the Nation's body and mind, constricted in an alien world, lived on, the America we know would have perished.