“Here is my principle: Taxes shall be levied according to ability to pay. That is the only American principle.”

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

The value of love will always be stronger than the value of hate. Any nation or group of nations which employs hatred eventually is torn to pieces by hatred.

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.

Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the assessment that something else is more important than fear.

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.