Quotes About FDR

FDR, as best as I can tell, had no kind of involvement at all in our conversion to the paper currency.

FDR had the gifts of self-knowledge and a compassion for the plight of others—saving graces that enabled him to become one of a handful of truly great and transformative presidents.

Franklin D. Roosevelt observed during the 1932 campaign, "The Presidency is not merely an administrative office. That's the least of it. It is more than an engineering job, efficient or inefficient. It is pre-eminently a place of moral leadership. All our great Presidents were leaders of thought at times when certain historic ideas in the life of the nation had to be clarified.

FDR used tactics more popularly associated with Richard Nixon. He used the IRS to punish political enemies.[204] He illegally wiretapped political opponents. He illegally closed the banks under color of a war power but in peacetime.[205] FDR, not Goldfinger, was the biggest gold thief of all time. He was guilty of war crimes, a consistent theme with progressive presidential heroes.[206]

FDR, even weakened and near the end of his life, opted to allow disabled veterans to see his true condition. This allowed them to understand the life which could still be before them.

The author writes that key FDR aide Harry Hopkins was in such poor health near the end of his boss's second term that one observer said he didn't know how Hopkins could possibly report to the president. But, at the onset of war and genuine national emergency, Hopkins was animated with a new sense of purpose.

Franklin D. Roosevelt was fortunate: He didn't take office until nearly four years after the Wall Street crash, by which time the Republicans' responsibility for the Depression was taken for granted.

It was now December 7, 1941; the date that Franklin D. Roosevelt was destined to declare would live in infamy.

FDR had been Assistant Secretary of the Navy. They told me, now forgotten, just how many pictures of ships they took out of the White House after he died. But he could choose good men.

To cut 1930s jobless, FDR taxed corps and rich. Govt used money to hire many millions. Worked then; would now again. Why no debate on that?

I mean [Franklin Delano] Roosevelt didn't - you know, when he came in, he didn't print any money.

I don't begrudge rich people running for office. God knows that FDR and JFK both came from very wealthy families but I think did more to help impoverished Americans than anybody else.

For three long years I have been going up and down this country preaching that government . . . costs too much. I shall not stop that preaching.

FDR recoiled from the plebeian food foisted on him as president; perhaps no dish was more off-putting to him than what home economists referred to as "salads," assemblages made from canned fruit, cream cheese, gelatin, and mayonnaise.

Everything FDR did was deliberate, particularly in politics. The leaders admired him, but they didn't trust him. They viewed him as "warm-hearted in everything but politics and there he was cold-blooded

Not to be overlooked are the four women who played crucial roles in FDR's life: his mother, Sara; Lucy Mercer, the woman he loved; Missy LeHand, the woman who loved him;

Since FDR's New Deal, corporations and wealthy families have been non-stop finding new ways to get tax breaks, deregulation and entitlements from the government.

I'm an FDR Democrat, and I really believe that the most important thing is the institutions of political parties, and engaging in those institutions, and, where you disagree with them, speaking up and sharing your disagreement.

I say let's go back to a truer use of the word 'freedom.' Let's start with President Franklin Roosevelt's Four Freedoms: freedom of speech and expression, freedom of worship, freedom from want and freedom from fear. I would add the freedom to bargain collectively. Those freedoms are under attack today.

the House voted 203 to 202 in favor of the bill. Some sixty-nine Democrats had defected, but twenty-one Republicans had voted yes. On August 18 FDR signed into law the bill extending selectees' obligations to eighteen months of military service.

Fear is historically the strongest emotion in economics. Remember FDR in the Great Depression? It's the most famous quote in financial history: "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself." In fact fear is probably the strongest human emotion, period. Whoever woke at four in the morning because they were feeling happy?

Franklin D. Roosevelt was explicit about the importance of presidents "persuading, leading, sacrificing, teaching always, because the greatest duty of a statesman is to educate.

When FDR died in 1945, he was still paralyzed from the waist down. After he died, his portrait was put on the dime. Through his illness, he went out of his way to minimize his difficulties. Of the thousands of pictures taken of him, only two show him in a leg brace or a wheelchair.

FDR's solicitor general said the Second Amendment had nothing to do with an individual right to own a gun; it had to do with the common defense. The court agreed, unanimously.2