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Men are not prisoners of fate, but only prisoners of their own minds.
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A reactionary is a somnambulist walking backwards.
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Not only our future economic soundness but the very soundness of our democratic institutions depends on the determination of our government to give employment to idle men.
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Happiness lies in the joy of achievement and the thrill of creative effort.
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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.
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The point in history at which we stand is full of promise and danger. The world will either move forward toward unity and widely shared prosperity - or it will move apart.
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I believe that in every country the people themselves are more peaceably and liberally inclined than their governments.
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The hopes of the Republic cannot forever tolerate either undeserved poverty or self-serving wealth.
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Physical strength can never permanently withstand the impact of spiritual force.
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When you see a rattlesnake poised to strike, you do not wait until he has struck to crush him.
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Democracy is not dying. We know it because we have seen it revive - and grow. We know it cannot die - because it is built on the unhampered initiative of individual men and women joined together in a common enterprise - an enterprise undertaken and carried through by the free expression of a free majority.
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I don't mind telling you in confidence that I am keeping in fairly close touch with that admirable Italian gentleman.
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The democratic aspiration is no mere recent phase in human history. It is human history. It permeated the ancient life of early peoples. It blazed anew in the Middle Ages. It was written in Magna Charta.
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I am a Christian and a Democrat, that's all.
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We know that we still have far to go; that we must more greatly build the security and the opportunity and the knowledge of every citizen, in the measure justified by the resources and the capacity of the land.
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Prosperous farmers mean more employment, more prosperity for the workers and the business men of every industrial area in the whole country.
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In our seeking for economic and political progress, we all go up - or else we all go down.
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We continue to recognize the greater ability of some to earn more than others. But we do assert that the ambition of the individual to obtain for him a proper security is an ambition to be preferred to the appetite for great wealth and great power.
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To a great extent the achievements of invention, of mechanical and of artistic creation, must of necessity, and rightly, be individual rather than governmental. It is the self-reliant pioneer in every enterprise who beats the path along which American civilization has marched. Such individual effort is the glory of America.
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It is the duty of the President to propose and it is the privilege of the Congress to dispose.
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A conservative is a man with two perfectly good legs who, however, has never learned how to walk forward.
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We have undertaken a new order of things; yet we progress to it under the framework and in the spirit and intent of the American Constitution. We have proceeded throughout the Nation a measurable distance on the road toward this new order.
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Hostilities exist. There is no blinking at the fact that our people, our territory and our interests are in grave danger. With confidence in our armed forces, with the unbounding determination of our people, we will gain the inevitable triumph, so help us God.
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As Commander-in-Chief of the Army and Navy I have directed that all measures be taken for our defense, that always will our whole nation remember the character of the onslaught against us. No matter how long it may take us to overcome this premeditated invasion, the American people, in their righteous might, will win through to absolute victory.