The important thing is neither your nationality nor the religion you professed, but how your faith translated itself in your life.
I wonder if one of the penalties of growing older is that you become more and more conscious that nothing is very permanent.
On the whole our armed services have been doing pretty well in the way of keeping us defended, but I hope our State Department will remember that it is really the department of achieving peace.
For instance, it is certain that women do not want a woman for President. Nor would they have the slightest confidence in her ability to fulfill the functions of that office.
A trait no other nation seems to possess in quite the same degree as we do namely, a feeling of almost childish injury and resentment unless the world as a whole recognizes how innocent we are of anything but the most generous and harmless intentions.
I never thought of achievement. I just did what came along for me to do – the thing that gave me the most pleasure.
After the discovery in 1918 of love letters revealing that Franklin was involved with Lucy Mercer: The bottom dropped out of my own particular world, I faced myself, my surroundings, my world, honestly for the first time.
I believe that all that we go through here must have some value.
The motivating force of the theory of a Democratic way of life is still a belief that as individuals we live cooperatively, and, to the best of our ability, serve the community in which we live...
If you have any interests you can gain a wider audience for those interests while the goldfish bowl is yours!
So I took an interest in politics, but I don’t know whether I enjoyed it! It was a wife’s duty to be interested in whatever interested her husband, whether it was politics, books, or a particular dish for dinner.
There is nothing to regret – either for those who go or for those who are left behind.
I consider those are rich who are doing something they feel worthwhile and which they enjoy doing.
If the use of leisure time is confined to looking at TV for a few extra hours every day, we will deteriorate as a people.
Sailors have the cleanest bodies and the filthiest minds.
I do not want church groups controlling the schools of our country. They must remain free.
Be flexible, but stick to your principles.
In the long run there is no more liberating, no more exhilarating experience than to determine one’s position, state it bravely, and then act boldly.
Feelings, too, are facts. Emotion is a fact. Human experience is a fact. It is often possible to gain more real insight into human beings and their motivation by reading great fiction than by personal acquaintance.
It is curious how much more interest can be evoked by a mixture of gossip, romance and mystery than by facts.