Quotes About FDR

In 1938... the year's #1 newsmaker was not FDR, Hitler, or Mussolini. Nor was it Lou Gehrig or Clark Gable. The subject of the most newspaper column inches in 1938 wasn't even a person. It was an undersized, crooked-legged racehorse named Seabiscuit.

Millions of Republican fliers openly jeered at the poor, accusing FDR of providing "Free lunch to Hoboes, Relief Clients, Underprivileged Transients, and others who won't work.

But always remember what Eleanor Roosevelt used to say." "Who?" (Gaynor's not really one for history. Maybe I can tutor him next.) "She was FDR's wife," says Uncle Frankie. "Oh. Cool. So who's FDR?" "That's not important.

Things sure have changed. FDR tried to calm us: "Nothing to fear but fear itself." Now politicians encourage the jitters. Panic is the new patriotism. "Today's Threat Level: Duck!

For a generation, Republicans have tried to unravel the activist government under which Americans have lived since the 1930s, when Democrat Franklin Delano Roosevelt created a government that regulated business, provided a basic social safety net, and invested in infrastructure.

I am a huge admirer of Franklin Roosevelt's, and I believe social security has done untold good in alleviating the once-widespread issue of poverty among the elderly. FDR believed in the greatness and generosity of Americans - but he was also a cold-blooded politician.

The Constitution has never greatly bothered any wartime president," Franklin D. Roosevelt's attorney general once wrote—and every president since has seen himself at war.

In the summer of 1935, FDR launched the Second Hundred Days, one of the great thrusts of domestic change ever seen—zero to sixty in an eyeblink, by government time. Roosevelt signed the Social Security Act to ensure that the pensionless elderly would not starve, started the Works Progress Administration to keep the government payroll rolling, and backed the National Labor Relations Act, which enshrined union rights in the workplace. The

My own special relationship with America began at an early age. My father, a fellow journalist, named me after Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

The genius of guys like Lincoln and Reagan and FDR - the great communicator leaders - is that they're actually educators, so they understand when they use a phrase that they have to explain it, because, by definition, you won't understand it or they wouldn't need to be using it.

In 1936, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt addressed the Third World Power Conference in Washington, D.C., on the importance of engineering in solving the nation's social problems. At the conclusion of his speech, he pressed a button that stirred the turbines in the Boulder Dam to "creative activity." "Boulder Dam," said the president as his right index finger came down, "I call you to life!

FDR misjudgment, one frequently ignored by historians: the president's refusal to concede Soviet culpability in the Katyn Wood massacre, one of the worst war crimes of the twentieth century.

The real issue, as far as Democrats are concerned, is the number of people receiving something from the government. This is exactly what Franklin Delano Roosevelt had in mind when he created this monster. And Clinton is planning to expand it beyond Roosevelt's wildest dreams.

Even though the clock didn't work, we kept the clock because of how we felt about Franklin D. Roosevelt . A lot since then I knew about FDR I wouldn't have been so enthusiastic.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt commends "the reading of the Bible" to my brother. The way they got these kids to die. Commends.

It may seem heretical to link the three great progressive champions of the twentieth century—Wilson, FDR, and Johnson—with racism. But the indisputable fact is that all three were either racist themselves or made their peace with racism. Progressive historiography has had to work overtime to conceal the actual facts. There

FDR did learn from both of them, and moreover, like Mussolini and Hitler, he had the economic catastrophe of the Great Depression to justify moving his country in a direction that the people would never ordinarily want to go.

FDR is the canonized hero of American progressivism. Subsequent Democratic presidents, from Lyndon Johnson to Obama, have all sought to expand the power of the state by invoking the FDR model. Johnson

This was a key condition the racists put before FDR. They said they would not support FDR's New Deal programs unless FDR supported their effort to block Republican anti-lynching bills. So FDR convinced even northern Democrats and progressives to back their southern counterparts in keeping these bills from coming to the floor for a vote.40 This is one of the most disgraceful legacies of the FDR presidency and it goes virtually unmentioned in progressive FDR biographies. In

As we will see, Franklin D. Roosevelt was an avid admirer of Mussolini who sought to import Italian fascist schemes to America. FDR also collaborated with the worst racist elements in America, working with them to block anti-lynching laws and exclude blacks from New Deal programs and name a former Klansman to the Supreme Court.

Unlike Churchill, FDR showed little concern about a pro-Soviet government taking control in Poland after the war. Indeed, in the spring of 1944, he told Averell Harriman, the U.S. ambassador to Moscow, that he "didn't care whether the countries bordering Russia became communized.

It's not surprising, then, that after conservatism made a comeback following the war and FDR's death, one of its first targets would be the film industry.

As part of that effort, FDR authorized FBI investigations of his political opponents, who were branded by administration spokesmen and much of the press as subversives, fifth columnists, and even Nazis.

The Founding Fathers are always spinning in their graves over something, as is Ronald Reagan, or FDR. Edward R. Murrow is a perennial grave spinner in the news business (though in fact, Murrow was cremated).