Quotations

The following quotations may be found in the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial:

Prologue

"Franklin's illness...gave him strength and courage he had not had before. He had to think out the fundamentals of living and learn the greatest of all lessons - infinite patience and never ending persistence."
Eleanor Roosevelt

First Term (1933-1937) - The Great Depression

"This generation of Americans has a rendezvous with destiny."
June 27, 1936

"I pledge you, I pledge myself, to a New Deal for the American People."
July 2, 1932

"In these days of difficulty, we Americans everywhere must and shall choose the path of social justice...the path of faith, the path of hope, and the path of love toward our fellow man."
October 2, 1932

"No country, however rich, can afford the waste of its human resources. Demoralization caused by vast unemployment is our greatest extravagance. Morally, it is the greatest menace to our social order."
September 30, 1934

"The only thing we have to fear is fear itself."
March 4, 1933

"Men and nature must work hand in hand. The throwing out of balance of the resources of nature throws out of balance also the lives of men."
January 24, 1935

"Among American citizens, there should be no forgotten men and no forgotten races."
October 26, 1936

Second Term (1937-1941) - The New Deal

"I never forget that I live in a house owned by all the American people and that I have been given their trust."
April 14, 1938

"I see one-third of a nation ill-housed, ill-clad, ill-nourished." "The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little."
January 20, 1937

"It is time to extend planning to a wider field, in this instance comprehending in one great project many states directly concerned with the basin of one of our greatest rivers."
April 10, 1933

"I propose to create a Civilian Conservation Corps to be used in simple work...More important, however, than the material gains will be the moral and spiritual value of such work."
March 21, 1933

"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."
January 9, 1940

Third Term (1941-1945) - The Second World War

"We must be the great arsenal of democracy."
December 29, 1940

"I have seen war. I have seen war on land and sea. I have seen blood running from the wounded...I have seen the dead in the mud. I have seen cities destroyed...I have seen children starving. I have seen the agony of mothers and wives. I hate war."
August 14, 1936

"They [who] seek to establish systems of government based on the regimentation of all human beings by a handful of individual rulers...call this a new order. It is not new and it is not order."
March 15, 1941

"We have faith that future generations will know 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."
February 12, 1943

Fourth Term (1945) - Legacy

"More than an end to war, we want an end to the beginnings of all wars."
Prepared for April 13, 1945

"Unless the peace that follows recognizes that the whole world is one neighborhood and does justice to the whole human race, the germs of another world war will remain as a constant threat to mankind."
February 12, 1943

"The structure of world peace cannot be the work of one man, or one party, or one nation...it must be a peace which rests on the cooperative effort of the whole world."
March 1, 1945

"The only limit to our realization of tomorrow will be our doubts of today. Let us move forward with strong and active faith."
Prepared for April 13, 1945

"Freedom of speech...Freedom of worship...Freedom from want...Freedom from fear."
January 6, 1941