20 Best and Most Inspiring FDR Quotes

Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1882-1945) was the 32nd president of The United States. He took office in 1933 with one of the most famous quotes in American political history. It’s the first quote below.

He’s one of those presidents who evokes strong emotions one way or the other, even more than 75 years later. Yet, no one can deny he led the nation through two of the most challenging moments in our history back-to-back. First, he met the Great Depression with bold action that put people back to work and helped him win four elections. Then he led the nation through the bulk of World War II before succumbing to a brain hemorrhage in 1944.

A graduate of Harvard University, FDR served as an Assistant Navy Secretary in Woodrow Wilson’s administration before running and winning two terms as governor of New York.

Seen by history a man of the working man, he remapped the US political landscape for the first time since The Civil War and ushered in a Democratic congressional majority that would survive much of the coming 60 years. His “first 100 days” plan to start rebuilding the economy became a metric people used to measure future presidents.

His personal story is noteworthy for the fact that he served his entire governorship and presidency in a wheel chair. In an age of radio, this fact was concealed from many Americans. Both his legs were paralyzed by an infection in 1921. During his life, most experts thought he’d suffered from polio. Though evaluation of his medical records decades after this passing point more toward Guillain–Barré syndrome (GBS).

Roosevelt, other John F. Kennedy, may have been the most gifted presidential orator in the era where we have recordings of presidents.

There are thousands of FDR quotes out there. I’ve curated this list, only adding what I believe to be his most inspiring quotes.

• Let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself—nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance. In every dark hour of our national life a leadership of frankness and vigor has met with that understanding and support of the people themselves which is essential to victory. I am convinced that you will again give that support to leadership in these critical days.

• When you come to the end of your rope, tie a knot and hang on.

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

• The only limit to our realization of tomorrow will be our doubts of today. Let us move forward with strong and active faith.

• It is common sense to take a method and try it. If it fails, admit it frankly and try another. But above all, try something.

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

• Freedom means the supremacy of human rights everywhere. Our support goes to those who struggle to gain those rights and keep them. Our strength is our unity of purpose. To that high concept there can be no end save victory.

• It isn't sufficient just to want - you've got to ask yourself what you are going to do to get the things you want.

• Confidence... thrives on honesty, on honor, on the sacredness of obligations, on faithful protection and on unselfish performance. Without them it cannot live.

• 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.

• The truth is found when all men are free to pursue it.

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

• A wise Government seeks to provide the opportunity through which the best of individual achievement can be obtained, while at the same time it seeks to remove such obstruction, such unfairness as springs from selfish human motives.

• The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little.

• This great Nation will endure as it has endured, will revive and will prosper.

• Lives of nations are determined not by the count of years, but by the lifetime of the human spirit. The life of a man is three-score years and ten: a little more, a little less. The life of a nation is the fullness of the measure of its will to live.

• We have faith that future generations will know that here, in the middle of the twentieth century, there came a time when men of good will found a way to unite, and produce, and fight to destroy the forces of ignorance, and intolerance, and slavery, and war.

• These dark days will be worth all they cost us if they teach us that our true destiny is not to be ministered unto but to minister to ourselves and to our fellow men.

• Yes, we are on the way back — not by mere chance, not by a turn of the cycle. We are coming back more soundly than ever before because we planned it that way, and don't let anybody tell you differently.

• Happiness lies not in the mere possession of money; it lies in the joy of achievement, in the thrill of creative effort.

• 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.

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

• 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.

• If civilization is to survive, we must cultivate the science of human relationships - the ability of all peoples, of all kinds, to live together, in the same world at peace.

• 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.