A wise Government seeks to provide the opportunity through which the best of individual achievement can be obtained, while at the same time it seeks to remove such obstruction, such unfairness as springs from selfish human motives.
Freedom of speech is of no use to a man who has nothing to say and freedom of worship is of no use to a man who has lost his God.
Democracy alone, of all forms of government, enlists the full force of men’s enlightened will.
We must open our eyes and see that modern civilization has become so complex and the lives of civilized men so interwoven with thelives of other men in other countries as to make it impossible to be in this world and out of it.
The traditional Jeffersonian principle of religious freedom was so broadly democratic that it included the right to have no religion at all – it gave to the individual the right to worship any God he chose or no god.
You are, I am sure, aware that genuine popular support in the United States is required to carry out any Government policy, foreign or domestic. The American people make up their own minds and no governmental action can change it.
America has been the New World in all tongues, to all peoples, not because this continent was a new-found land, but because all those who came here believed they could create upon this continent a new life – a life that should be new in freedom.
The money-changers have fled from their high seats in the temple of our civilization. We may now restore that temple to the ancient truths.
I tell the American people solemnly that the United States will never survive as a happy and fertile oasis of liberty surrounded by a cruel desert of dictatorship.
All private plans, all private lives, have been in a sense repealed by an overriding public danger.
Frankly, I do not know how to effect a permanency in American foreign policy.
Taxation according to income is the most effective instrument yet devised to obtain just contribution from those best able to bear it and to avoid placing onerous burdens upon the mass of our people.
I’ve fired my last shot. I think I should have another round in my belt.
There is much to be said against the climate on the coast of British Columbia and Alaska; yet, I believe that the scenery of one good day will compensate the tourists who will go there in increasing numbers.
The Democratic Party will live and continue to receive the support of the majority of Americans just so long as it remains a liberal party.
Dealing with the State Department is like watching an elephant become pregnant.
I want to preach a new doctrine. A complete separation of business and government.
The first twelve years are the hardest.
For every advance that the Japanese have made since they started their frenzied career of conquest, they have had to pay a very heavy toll in warships, in transports, in planes, and in men. They are feeling the effects of those losses.
Industrial combination is not wrong in itself. The danger lies in taking government into partnership.