- Many years ago I concluded that a few hair shirts were part of the mental wardrobe of every man. The President differs only from other men in that he has a more extensive wardrobe.
- [Said during the Great Depression] "Prosperity is just around the corner".
- Economic freedom cannot be sacrificed if political freedom is to be preserved.
- There are only three ways to meet the unpaid bills of a nation. The first is taxation. The second is repudiation. The third is inflation.
- The slogan of progress is changing from the full dinner pail to the full garage.
- The Union has become not merely a physical union of states, but rather a spiritual union in common ideals of our people. Within it is room for every variety of opinion, every possible experiment in social progress. Out of such variety comes growth, but only if we preserve and maintain our spiritual solidarity.
- When there is a lack of honor in government, the morals of the whole people are poisoned.
- Children are our most valuable natural resource.
- The glory of the nation rests in the character of her men. And character comes from boyhood. Thus every boy is a challenge to his elders.
- The thing I enjoyed most were visits from children. They did not want public office.
- I'm the only person of distinction who has ever had a depression named for him.
- No greater nor more affectionate honor can be conferred on an American than to have a public school named after him.
- Kipling's 'Recessional' really did something to England when it was published. It helped them through a bad time. Let me know if you find any great poems lying around.
- The office ... make[s] its incumbent a repair man behind a dyke. No sooner is one leak plugged than it is necessary to dash over and stop another that has broken out. There is no end to it.
- Economic depression can not be cured by legislative action or executive pronouncement.
- [N]o country can squander itself to prosperity on the ruin of its taxpayers.
- In the larger view the major forces of the depression now lie outside of the United States, and our recuperation has been retarded by the unwarranted degree of fear and apprehension created by these outside forces.
- With impressive proof on all sides of magnificent progress, no one can rightly deny the fundamental correctness of our economic system.
- I, with other Americans, have perhaps unduly resented the stream of criticism of American life ... more particularly have I resented the sneers at Main Street. For I have known that in the cottages that lay behind the street rested the strength of our national character.
- Prosperity cannot be restored by raids upon the public Treasury.
- The President is not only the leader of a party, he is the President of the whole people. He must interpret the conscience of America. He must guide his conduct by the idealism of our people.
- This is not a showman's job. I will not step out of character.
- Our fathers and grandfathers who poured over the Midwest were self-reliant, rugged, God-fearing people of indomitable courage.... They asked only for freedom of opportunity and equal chance. In these conceptions lies the real basis of American democracy. They and their fathers give a genius to American institutions that distinguished our people from any other in the world.
- The ancient bitter opposition to improved methods [of production] on the ancient theory that it more than temporarily deprives men of employment ... has no place in the gospel of American progress.
- I am convinced that ... we have reestablished confidence. Wages should remain stable. A very large degree of industrial unemployment and suffering which would otherwise have occurred has been prevented.
- Every expansion of government in business means that government in order to protect itself from the political consequences of its errors and wrongs is driven irresistibly without peace to greater and greater control of the nation's press and platform. Free speech does not live many hours after free industry and free commerce die.
- The recognition of Russia on November 16, 1933, started forces which were to have considerable influence in the attempt to collectivize the United States.
- Every collectivist revolution rides in on a Trojan horse of "Emergency". It was a tactic of Lenin, Hitler and Mussolini.... The invasion of New Deal Collectivism was introduced by this same Trojan horse.
- Blessed are the young for they shall inherit the national debt.
- About the time we think we can make ends meet, somebody moves the ends.
- My country owes me nothing. It gave me, as it gives every boy and girl, a chance. It gave me schooling, independence of action, opportunity for service and honor. In no other land could a boy from a country village, without inheritance or influential friends, look forward with unbounded hope.
- Words without actions are the assassins of idealism.
- America - a great social and economic experiment, noble in motive and far-reaching in purpose.
- Above all, we know that although Americans can be led to make great sacrifices, they do not like to be driven.
- Engineering is a great profession. There is the satisfaction of watching a figment of the imagination emerge through the aid of science to a plan on paper. Then it moves to realization in stone or metal or energy. Then it brings homes to men or women. Then it elevates the standard of living and adds to the comforts of life. This is the engineer's high privilege.
- A good many things go around in the dark besides Santa Claus.
- Older men declare war. But it is youth that must fight and die. And it is youth who must inherit the tribulation, the sorrow, and the triumphs that are aftermath of war.
- What the world needs today is a definite, spiritual mobilization of the nations who believe in God against this tide of Red agnosticism. ...And in rejecting an atheistic other world, I am confident that the Almighty God will be with us." -- "Address upon the American Road 1948-1950", p66, in which Hoover proposed abolishing the United Nations in favor of "cooperation of God-fearing free nations
- Next to religion, baseball has furnished a greater impact on American life than any other institution.
- The rigid volunteer rules of right and wrong in sports are second only to religious faith in moral training.
- Through baseball we channel boys desire for exercise and let off their explosive violence without letting them get into the police court.
- Baseball is the greatest of all team sports.
- [from a radio address, April 1946] Of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, the one named War has gone - at least for a while. But Famine, Pestilence and Death are still charging over the earth. Hunger is a silent visitor who comes like a shadow. He sits beside every anxious mother three times each day. He brings not alone suffering and sorrow, but fear and terror. He carries disorder and the paralysis of government, and even its downfall. He is more destructive than armies, not only in human life but in morals. All of the values of right living melt before his invasions, and every grain of civilization crumbles.
- The fate of civilization depends on whether the American people are willing to make a sacrifice for the next four months, if they are willing to save the world from chaos.
- [to his advisers in the 1928 presidential election campaign] I'll not kiss any babies.
- [The American people must not] set ourselves up as the oracle of righteousness in age-old quarrels that began before our nation was born.
- If we join the war and Stalin wins, we have aided him to impose more communism on Europe and the world ... War alongside Stalin to impose freedom is more than a travesty. It is a tragedy.
- [on the Morgenthau Plan] There is the illusion that the New Germany left after the annexations can be reduced to a 'pastoral state'. It cannot be done unless we exterminate or move 25,000,000 people out of it.
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