- [final words] I have a terrific headache!
- [from his First Inaugural Address, 1933] First of all, let my assert my firm belief, that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself . . .
- Yesterday, December 7th, 1941, a date which will live in infamy, the United States was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval forces of Japan.
- [after the attack on Pearl Harbor] No matter how long it may take us, the American people in their righteous might will win through to absolute victory.
- What I want to do is to create a country in which no one is left out.
- I have seen war. I have seen war on land and on sea. I hate war!
- [answering a charge that he sent a navy destroyer to retrieve his dog] These Republican leaders are not content with attacks on me or on my wife or on my sons. No, not content with that, they now include my little dog Fala.
- There are as many opinions as there are experts.
- A radical is a man with both feet firmly planted in the air.
- The only limit to our realization of tomorrow will be our doubts of today.
- The ablest man I ever met is the man you think you are.
- When you see a rattlesnake poised to strike, you do not wait until he has struck you before you crush him.
- The saving grace of America lies in the fact that the overwhelming majority are possessed of two great qualities--a sense of humor and a sense of proportion.
- You know, I am a juggler and I never let my right hand know what my left hand does. I may have one policy for Europe and one diametrically opposite for North and South America. I may be entirely inconsistent, and furthermore I am perfectly willing to mislead and tell untruths if it will help win the war.
- [ to the Democratic Convention, 1936] This generation of Americans has a rendezvous with destiny.
- Forests are the lungs of our land.
- I do not regard the Communists as any present or future threat to our country. In fact, I look upon Russia as our strongest ally in the years to come.
- While I do not believe in Communism, Russia under Communism is better than under the tsars. Stalin is a great leader, and although I despise some of his methods, it is the only way he can safeguard his government.
- I can't believe that we can fight a war against fascist slavery, and at the same time not work to free people all over the world from a backward colonial policy? The peace cannot include any continued despotism ... Equality of peoples involves the utmost freedom of competitive trade.
- I've tried to make it clear to Winston - and the others - that, while we're their allies and in it to victory by their side, they must never get the idea that we're in it just to help them hang on to the archaic, medieval empire ideas ... Great Britain signed the Atlantic Charter. I hope they realize the United States Government means to make them live up to it.
- I am expecting the Japs to attack any time now, probably within the next three or four days. (November 1941)
- [on Lend-Lease] Such aid is not an act of war, even if a dictator should unilaterally proclaim it to be.
- We expect to eliminate the danger from Japan, but it would serve us ill if we accomplished that and found that the rest of the world was dominated by Hitler and Mussolini. So we are going to win the war and we are going to win the peace that follows. (9 December 1941)
- We are committed to the proposition that the principles of morality and considerations of our own security will not permit us to acquiesce in a peace dictated by aggressors and sponsored by appeasers. (6 January 1941)
- I may never declare war; I may make war. If I were to ask Congress to declare war, they might argue about it for three months. (August 1941)
- We know that Germany and Japan are conducting their military and naval operations with a joint plan. Germany and Italy consider themselves at war with the United States without even bothering about a formal declaration ... Your government knows Germany has been telling Japan that if Japan would attack the United States, Japan would share the spoils when peace came. She was promised by Germany that if she came in she would receive control of the whole Pacific area and that means not only the Far East, but all the islands of the Pacific and also a stranglehold on the west coast of North and Central and South America. (9 December 1941)
- If Great Britain goes down, the Axis powers will be in a position to bring enormous military and naval resources against this hemisphere ... We are the Arsenal of Democracy. Our national policy is to keep war away from this country. (29 December 1940)
- Upon our naval and air patrol - now operating in large number over a vast expanse of the Atlantic Ocean - falls the duty of maintaining the American policy of freedom of the seas - now. That means, very simply, very clearly, that our patrolling vessels and planes will protect all merchant ships - not only American ships but ships of any flag - engaged in commerce in our defensive waters. They will protect them from submarines; they will protect them from surface raiders. It is no act of war on our part when we decide to protect the seas that are vital to American defense. The aggression is not ours. Ours is solely defense. But let this warning be clear. From now on, if German or Italian vessels of war enter the waters, the protection of which is necessary for American defense, they do so at their own peril. (11 September 1941)
- Some indeed still hold to the now somewhat obvious delusion that we of the United States can safely permit the United States to become a lone island, a lone island in a world dominated by the philosophy of force.
- In our American unity, we will pursue two obvious and simultaneous courses; we will extend to the opponents of force the material resources of this nation; and, at the same time, we will harness and speed up the use of those resources in order that we ourselves in the Americas may have equipment and training equal to the task of any emergency and every defense.
- The Government of Italy has now chosen to preserve what it terms its "freedom of action" and to fulfill what it states are its promises to Germany. In so doing it has manifested disregard for the rights and security of other nations, disregard for the lives of the peoples of those nations which are directly threatened by this spread of the war; and has evidenced its unwillingness to find the means through pacific negotiations for the satisfaction of what it believes are its legitimate aspirations. On this tenth day of June, 1940, the hand that held the dagger has struck it into the back of its neighbor.
- The property of all churches will be seized by the Reich and its puppets. The cross and all other symbols of religion are to be forbidden. The clergy are to be forever silenced under penalty of the concentration camps ... In the place of the churches of our civilization, there is to be set up an international Nazi church - a church which will be served by orators sent out by the Nazi government. In the place of the Bible, the words of Mein Kampf will be imposed and enforced as Holy Writ. And in place of the cross of Christ will be put two symbols - the swastika and the naked sword.
- Hitler has often protested that his plans for conquest do not extend across the Atlantic Ocean ... I have in my possession a secret map, made in Germany by Hitler's government - by the planners of the new world order. It is a map of South America and a part of Central America as Hitler proposes to reorganize it. This map makes clear the Nazi design not only against South America, but against the United States itself. Your government has in its possession another document made in Germany by Hitler's government. It is a plan to abolish all existing religions - Protestant, Catholic, Mohammedan, Hindu, Buddhist and Jewish alike.
- [on the likelihood of eastern Europe being occupied by the Soviets after World War II] I just have a hunch that Stalin is not that kind of a man.
- [on Joseph Stalin] I think that if I give him everything I possibly can and ask for nothing from him in return, 'noblesse oblige', he won't try to annex anything and will work with me for a world of democracy and peace.
- The British people and their Grecian allies need ships; from America they will get ships. They need planes; from America they will get planes. Yes, from America they need food, and from America they will get food. They need tanks and guns and ammunition and supplies of all kinds; from America they will get tanks and guns and ammunition and supplies of all kinds. China, likewise, expresses the magnificent will of millions of plain people to resist the dismemberment of their historic nation. China, through the Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek, asks our help. America has said that China shall have our help. (15 March 1941)
- Powerful enemies must be out-fought and out-produced.
- We are doing our utmost in the United States to furnish all of the material and supplies which can possibly be released to the Allied governments.
- We will have no truck with Fascism in any way, in any shape or manner. We will permit no vestige of Fascism to remain.
- In every country conquered by the Nazis and the Fascists, or the Japanese militarists, the people have been reduced to the status of slaves or chattels. It is our determination to restore these conquered peoples to the dignity of human beings, masters of their own fate, entitled to freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom from want, and freedom from fear. We have started to make good on that promise. I am sorry if I step on the toes of those Americans who, playing party politics at home, call that kind of foreign policy 'crazy altruism' and 'starry-eyed dreaming'.
- Nazi forces are not seeking mere modifications in colonial maps or in minor European boundaries. They openly seek the destruction of all elective systems of government on every continent, including our own. They seek to establish systems of government based on the regimentation of all human beings by a handful of individual rulers who seize power by force. Yes, these men and their hypnotized followers call this a "New Order." It is not new, and it is not order. For order among nations presupposes something enduring, some system of justice under which individuals over a long period of time are willing to live. Humanity will never permanently accept a system imposed by conquest, and based on slavery. These modern tyrants find it necessary to their plans to eliminate all democracies - eliminate them one by one. The nations of Europe, and indeed we, ourselves, did not appreciate that purpose. We do now.
- I don't mind telling you in confidence that I am keeping in fairly close touch with the admirable Italian gentleman.
- [on Benito Mussolini] I am much interested and deeply impressed by what he has accomplished and by his evidenced honest purpose of restoring Italy and seeking to prevent general European trouble.
- [on the shoot on sight order] The aggression is not ours. [Our concern] is solely defense. But let this warning be clear. From now on, if German or Italian vessels of war enter the waters, the protection of which is necessary for American defense, they do so at their own peril ... The sole responsibility rests upon Germany. There will be no shooting unless Germany continues to seek it,
- [on the Greer incident] The Greer was flying the American flag. Her identity as an American ship was unmistakable. She was then and there attacked by a submarine. Germany admits that it was a German submarine. The submarine deliberately fired a torpedo at the Greer, followed by another torpedo attack. In spite of what Hitler's propaganda bureau has invented, and in spite of what any American obstructionist organization may prefer to believe, I tell you the blunt fact that the German submarine fired first upon this American destroyer without warning, and with the deliberate design to sink her.
- Let this warning be clear. From now on, if German or Italian vessels enter the waters, the protection of which is necessary for American defense, they do so at their own peril ... When you see a rattlesnake poised to strike, you do not wait until he has struck before you crush him. These Nazi submarines and raiders are the rattlesnakes of the Atlantic.
- I have in my possession a secret map made in Germany by Hitler's government. It is a map of South America and a part of Central America, as Hitler proposes to reorganize it. This map makes clear the Nazi design not only against South America, but against the United States itself. Your government has in its possession another document made in Germany by Hitler's government. It is a plan to abolish all existing religions - Protestant, Catholic, Mohammedan, Hindu, Buddhist and Jewish alike.
- [to Winston Churchill, on the objectives of the 1941 Atlantic Charter] I can't believe that we can fight a war against fascist slavery, and at the same time not work to free people all over the world from a backward colonial policy.
- The question immediately presented in our Far Eastern affairs is whether the United States is or is not to stand by while Japan goes forward with a program of conquest by force in eastern Asia and the western Pacific.
- The forces endeavoring to enslave the entire world now are moving towards this hemisphere. Delay invites danger. Rapid and united efforts by all peoples of the world who are determined to remain free will ensure world victory for the forces of justice and righteousness over the forces of savagery and barbarism.
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