“All of our people all over the country-except the pure-blooded Indians-are immigrants or descendants of immigrants, including even those who came over here on the Mayflower.”

The principle on which this country was founded and by which it has always been governed is that Americanism is a matter of the mind and heart; Americanism is not, and never was, a matter of race or ancestry.

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

Be sincere; be brief; be seated.

The loneliest feeling in the world is when you think you are leading the parade and turn to find that no one is following you. No president who badly misguesses public opinion will last very long.

Those who have long enjoyed such privileges as we enjoy forget in time that men have died to win them.

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.

Against naked force the only possible defense is naked force. The aggressor makes the rules for such a war; the defenders have no alternative but matching destruction with more destruction, slaughter with greater slaughter.

The presidency is not merely an administrative office. It is pre-eminently a place of moral leadership.

Do Something. If it works, do more of it. If it doesn’t, do something else.

A conservative is a man with two perfectly good legs who, however, has never learned how to walk forward.

We are trying to construct a more inclusive society. We are going to make a country in which no one is left out.

There are as many opinions as there are experts.

To some generations much is given. Of other generations, much is expected.

Rules are not necessarily sacred, principles are.

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.

An election cannot give a country a firm sense of direction if it has two or more national parties which merely have different names but are as alike in their principles and aims as peas in the same pod.