When you see a rattlesnake poised to strike, you do not wait until he has struck to crush him.

Democracy cannot succeed unless those who express their choice are prepared to choose wisely. The real safeguard of democracy, therefore, is education.

Prosperous farmers mean more employment, more prosperity for the workers and the business men of every industrial area in the whole country.

No group and no government can properly prescribe precisely what should constitute the body of knowledge with which true education is concerned.

Whoever seeks to set one religion against another seeks to destroy all religion.

The school is the last expenditure upon which America should be willing to economize.

The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.

Confidence... thrives on honesty, on honor, on the sacredness of obligations, on faithful protection and on unselfish performance. Without them it cannot live.

I am a Christian and a Democrat, that's all.

To reach a port, we must sail - sail, not tie at anchor - sail, not drift.

Selfishness is the only real atheism; aspiration, unselfishness, the only real religion.

The virtues are lost in self-interest as rivers are lost in the sea.

Art is not a treasure in the past or an importation from another land, but part of the present life of all living and creating peoples.

We must lay hold of the fact that economic laws are not made by nature. They are made by human beings.

The point in history at which we stand is full of promise and danger. The world will either move forward toward unity and widely shared prosperity - or it will move apart.

There are many ways of going forward, but only one way of standing still.

But while they prate of economic laws, men and women are starving. We must lay hold of the fact that economic laws are not made by nature. They are made by human beings.

I do not look upon these United States as a finished product. We are still in the making.

Happiness lies in the joy of achievement and the thrill of creative effort.

We continue to recognize the greater ability of some to earn more than others. But we do assert that the ambition of the individual to obtain for him a proper security is an ambition to be preferred to the appetite for great wealth and great power.

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.

The nation that destroys its soil destroys itself.

I pledge you, I pledge myself, to a new deal for the American people.

Self-interest is the enemy of all true affection.

Put two or three men in positions of conflicting authority. This will force them to work at loggerheads, allowing you to be the ultimate arbiter.

Our national determination to keep free of foreign wars and foreign entanglements cannot prevent us from feeling deep concern when ideals and principles that we have cherished are challenged.

True individual freedom cannot exist without economic security and independence. People who are hungry and out of a job are the stuff of which dictatorships are made.

Those newspapers of the nation which most loudly cried dictatorship against me would have been the first to justify the beginnings of dictatorship by somebody else.

More than an end to war, we want an end to the beginning of all wars - yes, an end to this brutal, inhuman and thoroughly impractical method of settling the differences between governments.

Competition has been shown to be useful up to a certain point and no further, but cooperation, which is the thing we must strive for today, begins where competition leaves off.

Take a method and try it. If it fails, admit it frankly, and try another. But by all means, try something.

There is nothing I love as much as a good fight.

The United States Constitution has proved itself the most marvelously elastic compilation of rules of government ever written.

In our seeking for economic and political progress, we all go up - or else we all go down.

One thing is sure. We have to do something. We have to do the best we know how at the moment... If it doesn't turn out right, we can modify it as we go along.

A nation that destroys its soils destroys itself. Forests are the lungs of our land, purifying the air and giving fresh strength to our people.

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 little.

Human kindness has never weakened the stamina or softened the fiber of a free people. A nation does not have to be cruel to be tough.

In politics, nothing happens by accident. If it happens, you can bet it was planned that way.

If you treat people right they will treat you right... ninety percent of the time.

The only limit to our realization of tomorrow will be our doubts of today.

I'm not the smartest fellow in the world, but I can sure pick smart colleagues.

Physical strength can never permanently withstand the impact of spiritual force.

I think we consider too much the good luck of the early bird and not enough the bad luck of the early worm.

Not only our future economic soundness but the very soundness of our democratic institutions depends on the determination of our government to give employment to idle men.

The truth is found when men are free to pursue it.

It isn't sufficient just to want - you've got to ask yourself what you are going to do to get the things you want.

We have always held to the hope, the belief, the conviction that there is a better life, a better world, beyond the horizon.

This generation of Americans has a rendezvous with destiny.