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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.
Franklin D. Roosevelt -
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.
Franklin D. Roosevelt
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There are many ways of going forward, but only one way of standing still.
Franklin D. Roosevelt -
No democracy can long survive which does not accept as fundamental to its very existence the recognition of the rights of its minorities.
Franklin D. Roosevelt -
Democracy cannot succeed unless those who express their choice are prepared to choose wisely. The real safeguard of democracy, therefore, is education.
Franklin D. Roosevelt -
Be sincere; be brief; be seated.
Franklin D. Roosevelt -
Yesterday, December seventh, 1941, a date which will live in infamy, the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan. We will gain the inevitable triumph, so help us God.
Franklin D. Roosevelt -
As a nation, we may take pride in the fact that we are soft-hearted; but we cannot afford to be soft-headed.
Franklin D. Roosevelt
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Let us never forget that government is ourselves and not an alien power over us. The ultimate rulers of our democracy are not a President and senators and congressmen and government officials, but the voters of this country.
Franklin D. Roosevelt -
It is fun to be in the same decade with you.
Franklin D. Roosevelt -
On each national day of inauguration since 1789, the people have renewed their sense of dedication to the United States.
Franklin D. Roosevelt -
I am neither bitter nor cynical but I do wish there was less immaturity in political thinking.
Franklin D. Roosevelt -
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.
Franklin D. Roosevelt -
The real truth of the matter is, as you and I know, that a financial element in the larger centers has owned the Government ever since the days of Andrew Jackson - and I am not wholly excepting the Administration of W. W. The country is going through a repetition of Jackson's fight with the Bank of the United States - only on a far bigger and broader basis.
Franklin D. Roosevelt
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It is true that the moral consciousness of the world must recognize the importance of removing injustices and well-founded grievances; but at the same time it must be aroused to the cardinal necessity of honoring sanctity of treaties, of respecting the rights and liberties of others, and of putting an end to acts of international aggression.
Franklin D. Roosevelt -
There are as many opinions as there are experts.
Franklin D. Roosevelt -
We know it because, if we look below the surface, we sense it still spreading on every continent - for it is the most humane, the most advanced, and in the end the most unconquerable of all forms of human society.
Franklin D. Roosevelt -
I ask you to judge me by the enemies I have made.
Franklin D. Roosevelt -
Lives of nations are determined not by the count of years, but by the lifetime of the human spirit. The life of a man is three-score years and ten: a little more, a little less. The life of a nation is the fullness of the measure of its will to live.
Franklin D. Roosevelt -
We have always known that heedless self-interest was bad morals; we know now that it is bad economics.
Franklin D. Roosevelt
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We must scrupulously guard the civil rights and civil liberties of all our citizens, whatever their background. We must remember that any oppression, any injustice, any hatred, is a wedge designed to attack our civilization.
Franklin D. Roosevelt -
The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.
Franklin D. Roosevelt -
No government can help the destinies of people who insist in putting sectional and class consciousness ahead of general weal.
Franklin D. Roosevelt -
I think we consider too much the good luck of the early bird and not enough the bad luck of the early worm.
Franklin D. Roosevelt