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As a nation, we may take pride in the fact that we are soft-hearted; but we cannot afford to be soft-headed.
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In the days and in the years that are to come we shall work for a just and honorable peace, a durable peace, as today we work and fight for total victory in war. We can and we will achieve such a peace.
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Are you laboring under the impression that I read these memoranda of yours? I can't even lift them.
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No democracy can long survive which does not accept as fundamental to its very existence the recognition of the rights of its minorities.
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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.
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It will be recorded that the distance of Hawaii from Japan makes it obvious that the attack was deliberately planned many days or even weeks ago. During the intervening time the Japanese Government has deliberately sought to deceive the United States by false statements and expressions of hope for continued peace.
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We defend and we build a way of life, not for America alone, but for all mankind.
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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.
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Self-interest is the enemy of all true affection.
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It is common sense to take a method and try it. If it fails, admit it frankly and try another. But above all, try something.
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I ask you to judge me by the enemies I have made.
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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.
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The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.
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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.
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We have always held to the hope, the belief, the conviction that there is a better life, a better world, beyond the horizon.
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On each national day of inauguration since 1789, the people have renewed their sense of dedication to the United States.
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Be sincere; be brief; be seated.
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No government can help the destinies of people who insist in putting sectional and class consciousness ahead of general weal.
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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.
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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.
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I am neither bitter nor cynical but I do wish there was less immaturity in political thinking.
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This generation of Americans has a rendezvous with destiny.
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Repetition does not transform a lie into a truth.
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Don't forget what I discovered that over ninety percent of all national deficits from 1921 to 1939 were caused by payments for past, present, and future wars.