“Men are not prisoners of fate, but only prisoners of their own minds.”

Go for the moon. If you don’t get it, you’ll still be heading for a star. Happiness lies not in the mere possession of money; it lies in the joy of achievement, in the thrill of the creative effort.

The barrier to success is not something which exists in the real world; it is composed purely and simply of doubts about ability.

The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.

We must especially beware of that small group of selfish men who would clip the wings of the American Eagle in order to feather their own nests.

No government can help the destinies of people who insist in putting sectional and class consciousness ahead of general weal.

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.

I want to preach a new doctrine. A complete separation of business and government.

Calm seas never made a good sailor.

It is one of the characteristics of a free and democratic nation that it have free and independent labor unions.

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 goverment.

Government cannot close its eyes to the pollution of waters, to the erosion of soil, to the slashing of forests any more than it can close its eyes to the need for slum clearance and schools.

In our democracy officers of the government are the servants, and never the masters of the people.

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

The fate of America cannot depend on any one man. The greatness of America is grounded in principles and not on any single personality.

The best customer of American industry is the well paid worker.

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.

He who has calmly reconciled his life to fate … can look fortune in the face.

There is one kind of prison where the man is behind bars, and everything that he desires is outside; and there is another kind where the things are behind the bars, and the man is outside.

Nothing, including human suffering, happens by chance.

He who has calmly reconciled his life to fate, and set proud death beneath his feet, can look fortune in the face, unbending both to good and bad; his countenance unconquered.

Woe to the dupe that yields to Fate!

Living Life Tomorrow’s fate, though thou be wise, Thou canst not tell nor yet surmise; Pass, therefore, not today in vain, For it will never come again.

Up from Earth’s Centre through the Seventh Gate rose, and on the Throne of Saturn sate; And many a Knot unravel’d by the Road; But not the Master-knot of Human Fate.

Human beings suffer agonies, and their sad fates become legends; poets write verses about them and playwrights compose dramas, and the remembrance of past grief becomes a source of present pleasure – such is the strange alchemy of the spirit.