Nobody will ever deprive the American people of the right to vote except the American people themselves and the only way they could do this is by not voting. There should be no bitterness or hate where the sole thought is the welfare of the United States of America. No man can occupy the office of President without realizing that he is President of all the 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 too little. Rules are not necessarily sacred, principles are. I think we consider too much the luck of the early bird and not enough the bad luck of the early worm. As a nation we may take pride in the fact that we are softhearted; but we cannot afford to be soft-headed. I am a Christian and a Democrat, that's all. A conservative is a man with two perfectly good legs who, however, has never learned to walk forward.

I'm not the smartest fellow in the world, but I can sure pick smart colleagues. 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 known that heedless self interest was bad morals, we now know that it is bad economics. Here is my principle: Taxes shall be levied according to ability to pay. That is the only American principle. It is fun to be in the same decade with you [Roosevelt to Churchill].

Taxes, after all, are dues that we pay for the privileges of membership in an organized society. War is a contagion. It is an unfortunate human failing that a full pocketbook often groans more loudly than an empty stomach. The history of the last half century is accordingly in large measure a history of financial titans, whose methods were not scrutinized with too much care and who were honored in proportion as they produced the results, irrespective of the means they used. Confidence... thrives on honesty, on honor, on the sacredness of obligations, on faithful protection and on unselfish performance. Without them it cannot live.

I ask you to judge me by the enemies I have made. There is a mysterious cycle in human events.
To some generations much is given.
Of other generations much is expected.
This generation of Americans has a rendezvous with destiny.
In this world of ours in other lands, there are some people, who, in times past, have lived and fought for freedom, and seem to have grown too weary to carry on the fight. They have sold their heritage of freedom for the illusion of a living. They have yielded their democracy.
I believe in my heart that only our success can stir their ancient hope. They begin to know that here in America we are waging a war against want and destitution and economic demoralization. It is more than that; it is a war for the survival of democracy. We are fighting to save a great and precious form of government for ourselves and for the world. 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. We have faith that future generations will know that 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. 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.

We are trying to construct a more inclusive society. We are going to make a country in which no one is left out. Happiness lies in the joy of achievement and the thrill of creative effort. The only sure bulwark of continuing liberty is a government strong enough to protect the interests of the people, and a people strong enough and well enough informed to maintain its sovereign control over the government. You'll have to learn that public life takes a lot of sweat. But it doesn't need to worry you. You won't always be right, but you musn't suffer from being wrong. We cannot always build the future for our youth, but we can build our youth for the future.

If we will not prepare to give all that we have and that all that we are to preserve Christian civilization in our land, we shall go to destruction. A Radical is a man with both feet firmly planted - in the air.
A Conservative is a man with two perfectly good legs who, however, has never learned to walk forward.
A Reactionary is a somnambulist walking backwards.
A Liberal is a man who uses his legs and his hands at the behest - at the command of his head. When you get to the end of your rope. Tie a knot and hang on. I sometimes think that the saving grace of America lies in the fact that the overwhelming majority of Americans are possessed of two great qualities - a sense of humor and a sense of proportion. People, like charity, begins at home.

Modern civilization has become so complex and the lives of civilized men so interwoven with the lives of other men in other countries as to make it impossible to be in this world and not of it. Democracy cannot succeed unless those who express their choice are prepared to choose wisely. The real safeguard of democracy, therefore, is education. Men are not prisoners of fate, but only prisoners of their own minds. No realistic American can expect from a dictator's peace international generosity, or return of true independence, or world disarmament, or freedom of expression, or freedom of religion, or even good business. Such a peace would bring no security for us or for our neighbors. Those, who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety. Books can not be killed by fire. People die, but books never die. No man and no force can abolish memory... In this war, we know, books are weapons. And it is a part of your dedication always to make them weapons for man's freedom.

Those who have long enjoyed such privileges as we enjoy forget in time that
men have died to win them. We know now that Government by organized money is just as dangerous as Government by organized mob. The real truth of the matter is, as you and I know, that a financial element in the large centers has owned the government of the U.S. since the days of Andrew Jackson. 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. I have an unshaken conviction that democracy can never be undermined if we maintain our library resources and a national intelligence capable of utilizing them.

Whoever seeks to set one religion against another seeks to destroy all religion. Physical strength can never permanently withstand the impact of spiritual force. It is an old strategy of tyrants to delude their victims into fighting their battles for them. 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. Better the occasional faults of a government that lives in a spirit of charity than the consistent omissions of a government frozen in the ice of its own indifference.

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. We have learned that we cannot live alone, at peace; that our own well-being is dependent on the well-being of nations far away. We have learned that we must live as men, and not as ostriches nor as dogs in the manger. We have learned to be citizens of the world, members of the human community. There are many ways of going forward, but only one way of standing still. We know that equality of individual ability has never existed and never will, but we do insist that equality of opportunity still must be sought. Today we are faced with the pre-eminent fact that if civilization is to survive, we must cultivate the science of human relationships, the ability of all peoples of all kins to live together and to work together in the same world at peace.

There is nothing so American as our national parks. The scenery and the wildlife are native. The fundamental idea behind the parks is native. It is, in brief, that the country belongs to the people, that it is in process of making for the enrichment of the lives of all of us. The parks stand as the outward symbal of the great human principle. Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the assessment that something else is more important than fear. It's a terrible thing to look over your shoulder when you are trying to lead - and to find no one there. The first truth is that the liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than their democratic state itself. That, in its essence, is fascism - ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power... Among us today a concentration of private power without equal in history is growing. When you see a rattlesnake poised to strike, you do not wait until he has struck to crush him.

It is to the real advantage of every producer, every manufacturer and every merchant to cooperate in the improvement of working conditions, because the best customer of American industry is the well-paid worker. If you treat people right they will treat you right ... ninety percent of the time. Remember, remember always, that all of us, and you and I especially, are descended from immigrants and revolutionists. I do not look upon these United States as a finished product. We are still in the making. The United States Constitution has proved itself the most marvelously elastic compilation of rules of government ever written.

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. We will gain the inevitable triumph, so help us God. In politics, nothing happens by accident. If it happens, you can bet it was planned that way. The only limit to our realization of tomorrow will be our doubts of today. In our personal ambitions we are individualists. But in our seeking for economic and political progress as a nation, we all go up or else all go down as one people. 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.

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. Presidents are selected, not elected. The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.