Franklin D. Roosevelt was the 32nd President of the United States, serving from 1933 until his death in 1945. A member of the Democratic Party, he won a record four presidential elections and became a central figure in world events during the first half of the 20th century. Roosevelt was a sickly, timid child who overcame his physical challenges by developing a strong mind and will. He entered politics in 1910, ran for and was elected to the New York State Senate in 1912. He helped Woodrow Wilson win the presidential election in 1912 and became Wilson’s Assistant Secretary of the Navy. In 1921, he contracted polio and was paralyzed from the waist down.
Despite his physical disability, Roosevelt returned to public life in 1924 and was elected as Governor of New York. He ran for president in 1932 but lost in the Democratic primary to Al Smith. When the United States became involved in World War II after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, Roosevelt gave strong leadership to the country. He was reelected in 1940 for an unprecedented third term and a fourth term in 1944. Roosevelt died in April 1945, just months into his fourth term, and was succeeded by Vice President Harry S. Truman.
Table of Contents:
1. Early Life
2. Political Career
3. The Great Depression
4. World War II
5. Later Life and Death
6. Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Legacy
7. Top Franklin D. Roosevelt Quotes
Early Life:
Franklin Delano Roosevelt was born on January 30, 1882, in Hyde Park, New York, to James Roosevelt and Sara Ann Delano. His parents were both from wealthy old New York families, and Roosevelt was the only child of the couple. Roosevelt’s father was a successful businessman and his mother was a well-educated woman who was very involved in her children’s education. Roosevelt was home-schooled until he was eight years old, when he began attending a private school in New York City.
In 1896, Roosevelt entered Groton School, a prestigious Episcopalian prep school in Massachusetts. He was an active student, participating in sports and student government. Roosevelt graduated from Groton in 1900 and then enrolled at Harvard College. He continued to play sports and was a member of the rowing team. He also became involved in the activities of the student government and the Crimson, the Harvard student newspaper. Roosevelt graduated from Harvard in 1904 with a Bachelor of Arts degree.
Political Career:
Roosevelt’s entry into politics came in 1910, when he ran for and was elected to the New York State Senate as a Democrat. He served in the State Senate for two years, and then in 1913, he was appointed as Assistant Secretary of the Navy by President Woodrow Wilson. Roosevelt held this position until the end of Wilson’s first term in 1921.
In 1920, Roosevelt was the Democratic Party’s nominee for vice president, but the ticket lost to the Republican ticket of Warren G. Harding and Calvin Coolidge. In 1921, Roosevelt contracted polio, which left him paralyzed from the waist down. He continued his political career, however, and in 1924 he was elected Governor of New York. He was reelected in 1928.
In 1932, Roosevelt ran for president, but he lost the Democratic nomination to Al Smith. He ran again in 1933 and was elected to the presidency. He was reelected in 1936, 1940, and 1944, serving as president for 12 years, from 1933 until his death in 1945.
The Great Depression:
Roosevelt was elected in 1932, at the height of the Great Depression. He immediately set to work to try to improve the economy. He implemented a number of programs, known collectively as the New Deal, to help bring the country out of the Depression. These programs provided relief for the unemployed and homeless, helped farmers, and created jobs. They also established Social Security and other programs that continue to benefit Americans today.
The New Deal programs were not immediately successful in ending the Depression, but they did help to ease the suffering of the American people and to restore some confidence in the government. Roosevelt was reelected in a landslide in 1936, in part because of the success of the New Deal programs.
World War II:
When World War II began in 1939, Roosevelt declared that the United States would remain neutral. This policy changed in 1941, when Japan attacked the American naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. The United States then entered the war on the side of the Allies, which included Great Britain, France, and the Soviet Union.
Roosevelt served as a powerful wartime leader, helping to raise morale at home and leading the country to victory. He also worked closely with the other Allied leaders, particularly British Prime Minister Winston Churchill. In 1945, Roosevelt, Churchill, and Soviet leader Joseph Stalin met in Yalta, Russia, to discuss the postwar world. This meeting became known as the Yalta Conference.
Later Life and Death:
In April 1945, Roosevelt traveled to Warm Springs, Georgia, for a vacation. On April 12, he suffered a cerebral hemorrhage and died. He was succeeded by Vice President Harry S. Truman.
Legacy:
Franklin D. Roosevelt is considered to be one of the most important presidents in American history. He led the country through the Great Depression and World War II, and his policies and programs helped to shape the modern American welfare state. He is also remembered for his leadership in creating the United Nations.
Top Franklin D. Roosevelt Quotes:
“We cannot always build the future for our youth, but we can build our youth for the future.” – Franklin D. Roosevelt
“The program for social security that is now pending before the Congress is a necessary part of the future unemployment policy of the government. While our present and projected expenditures for work relief are wholly within the reasonable limits of our national credit resources, it is obvious that we cannot continue to create governmental deficits for that purpose year after year after year. We must begin now to make provision for the future and that is why our social security program is an important part of the complete picture. It proposes, by means of old-age pensions, to help those who have reached the age of retirement to give up their jobs and thus give to the younger generation greater opportunities for work and to give to all, old and young alike, a feeling of security as they look toward old age.” – Franklin D. Roosevelt
“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.” – Franklin D. Roosevelt
“Wealth in the modern world does not come merely from individual effort; it results from a combination of individual effort and of the manifold uses to which the community puts that effort. The individual does not create the product of his industry with his own hands; he utilizes the many processes and forces of mass production to meet the demands of a national and international market. Therefore, in spite of the great importance in our national life of the efforts and ingenuity of unusual individuals, the people in the mass have inevitably helped to make large fortunes possible. Without mass cooperation great accumulations of wealth would be impossible save by unhealthy speculation.” – Franklin D. Roosevelt
“We … would rather die on our feet than live on our knees.” – Franklin D. Roosevelt
“We defend and we build a way of life, not for America alone, but for all mankind.” – Franklin D. Roosevelt
“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 have seized power by force. These men and their hypnotized followers call this a new order. It is not new. It is not order.” – Franklin D. Roosevelt
“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.” – Franklin D. Roosevelt
“So many figures are quoted to prove so many things. Sometimes it depends on what paper you read or what broadcast you listen in on.” – Franklin D. Roosevelt
“Much has been given us, and much will rightfully be expected from us. We have duties to others and duties to ourselves; and we can shirk neither. We have become a great nation, forced by the fact of its greatness into relations with the other nations of the earth, and we must behave as be seen as a people with such responsibilities.” – Franklin D. Roosevelt
“Yesterday, December 7th, 1941 — a date which will live in infamy — the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan.” – Franklin D. Roosevelt
“Democracy alone, of all forms of government, enlists the full force of men’s enlightened will.” – Franklin D. Roosevelt
“Unhappy events abroad have retaught us two simple truths about the liberty of a democratic people. The first truth is that the liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than their democratic State itself. That, in its essence, is fascism — ownership of government by an individual, by a group or by any other controlling private power. The second truth is that the liberty of a democracy is not safe if its business system does not provide employment and produce and distribute goods in such a way as to sustain an acceptable standard of living. Both lessons hit home.” – Franklin D. Roosevelt
“To those people who say that our expenditures for public works and for other means for recovery are a waste that we cannot afford, I answer that 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. Some people try to tell me that we must make up our minds that for the future we shall permanently have millions of unemployed just as other countries have had them for over a decade. What may be necessary for those other countries is not my responsibility to determine. But as for this country, I stand or fall by my refusal to accept as a necessary condition of our future a permanent army of unemployed. On the contrary, we must make it a national principle that we will not tolerate a large army of unemployed, that we will arrange our national economy to end our present unemployment as soon as we can and then to take wise measures against its return. I do not want to think that it is the destiny of any American to remain permanently on relief rolls.” – Franklin D. Roosevelt
“If you treat people right they will treat you right — ninety percent of the time.” – Franklin D. Roosevelt
“Real estate cannot be lost or stolen, nor can it be carried away. Purchased with common sense, paid for in full, and managed with reasonable care, it is about the safest investment in the world.” – Franklin D. Roosevelt
“The True conservative seeks to protect the system of private property and free enterprise by correcting such injustices and inequalities as arise from it. The most serious threat to our institutions comes from those who refuse to face the need for change. Liberalism becomes the protection for the far-sighted conservative.” – Franklin D. Roosevelt
“Men may differ as to the particular form of governmental activity with respect to industry and business, but nearly all men are agreed that private enterprise in times such as these cannot be left without assistance and without reasonable safeguards lest it destroy not only itself but also our processes of civilization.” – Franklin D. Roosevelt
“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.” – Franklin D. Roosevelt
“It is a bad thing for a nation to raise and to admire a false standard of success; and there can be no falser standard than that set by the deification of material well-being in and for itself.” – Franklin D. Roosevelt
“The only thing we have to fear is fear itself–nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.” – Franklin D. Roosevelt
“Many causes produce war. There are ancient hatreds, turbulent frontiers, the “legacy of old forgotten, far-off things, and battles long ago.” There are new-born fanaticisms. Convictions on the part of certain peoples that they have become the unique depositories of ultimate truth and right.” – Franklin D. Roosevelt
“It is possible that when the banks resume a very few people who have not recovered from their fear may again begin withdrawels. Let me make it clear to you that the banks will take care of all needs except of course the hysterical demands of hoarders–and it is my belief that hoarding during the past week has become an exceedingly unfashionable pastime in every part of our nation. It needs no prophet to tell you that when the people find that they can get their money–that they can get it when they want it for all legitimate purposes–the phantom of fear will soon be laid. People will again be glad to have their money where it will be safely taken care of and where they can use it conveniently at any time. I can assure you, my friends, that it is safer to keep your money in a reopened bank than it is to keep it under a mattress.” – Franklin D. Roosevelt
“For too many of us the political equality we once had won was meaningless in the face of economic inequality. A small group had concentrated into their own hands an almost complete control over other people’s property, other people’s money, other people’s labor — other people’s lives. For too many of us life was no longer free; liberty no longer real; men could no longer follow the pursuit of happiness.” – Franklin D. Roosevelt
“To a great extent the achievements of invention, of mechanical and of artistic creation, must of necessity, and rightly, be individual rather than governmental. It is the self-reliant pioneer in every enterprise who beats the path along which American civilization has marched. Such individual effort is the glory of America.” – Franklin D. Roosevelt
“It is of little use for us to pay lip-loyalty to the mighty men of the past unless we sincerely endeavor to apply to the problems of the present precisely the qualities which in other crises enabled the men of that day to meet those crises.” – Franklin D. Roosevelt
“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.” – Franklin D. Roosevelt
“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.” – Franklin D. Roosevelt
“You often hear people speaking as if life was like striving upward toward a mountain peak. That is not so. Life is as if you were traveling a ridge crest. You have the gulf of inefficiency on one side and the gulf of wickedness on the other, and it helps not to have avoided one gulf if you fall into the other.” – Franklin D. Roosevelt
“We Americans of today, together with our allies, are passing through a period of supreme test. It is a test of our courage—of our resolve—of our wisdom—our essential democracy. If we meet that test—successfully and honorably—we shall perform a service of historic importance which men and women and children will honor throughout all time. As I stand here today, having taken the solemn oath of office in the presence of my fellow countrymen—in the presence of our God— I know that it is America’s purpose that we shall not fail.” – Franklin D. Roosevelt
“Not only our future economic soundness but the very soundness of our democratic institutions depends on the determination of our government to give employment to idle men.” – Franklin D. Roosevelt
“But while they prate of economic laws, men and women are starving. We must lay hold of the fact that economic laws are not made by nature. They are made by human beings.” – Franklin D. Roosevelt
“Remember, remember always, that all of us, and you and I especially, are descended from immigrants and revolutionists.” – Franklin D. Roosevelt
“The hopes of the Republic cannot forever tolerate either undeserved poverty or self-serving wealth.” – Franklin D. Roosevelt
“I think we consider too much the good luck of the early bird and not enough the bad luck of the early worm.” – Franklin D. Roosevelt
“Only a very small minority of the people of this country believe in gambling as a substitute for the old philosophy of Benjamin Franklin that the way to wealth is through work.” – Franklin D. Roosevelt
“We can afford all that we need, but we cannot afford all that we want.” – Franklin D. Roosevelt
“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.” – Franklin D. Roosevelt
“It seems to me to be equally plain that no business which depends for existence on paying less than living wages to its workers has any right to continue in this country. By “business” I mean the whole of commerce as well as the whole of industry; by workers I mean all workers, the white collar class as well as the men in overalls; and by living wages I mean more than a bare subsistence level-I mean the wages of decent living.” – Franklin D. Roosevelt
“The unforgivable crime is soft hitting. Do not hit at all if it can be avoided; but never hit softly.” – Franklin D. Roosevelt
“We shall strive for perfection. We shall not achieve it immediately—but we still shall strive. We may make mistakes—but they must never be mistakes which result from faintness of heart or abandonment of moral principle.” – Franklin D. Roosevelt
“The success of our whole national program depends, of course, on the cooperation of the public–on its intelligent support and its use of a reliable system.” – Franklin D. Roosevelt
“Be sincere, be brief, be seated.” – Franklin D. Roosevelt
“The peace-loving nations must make a concerted effort in opposition to those violations of treaties and those ignorings of humane instincts which today are creating a state of international anarchy and instability from which there is no escape through mere isolation or neutrality.” – Franklin D. Roosevelt
“As a nation, we may take pride in the fact that we are softhearted; but we cannot afford to be soft-headed.” – Franklin D. Roosevelt
“Nothing in this world is worth having or worth doing unless it means effort, pain, difficulty.” – Franklin D. Roosevelt
“Freedom of speech is of no use to a man who has nothing to say and freedom of worship is of no use to a man who has lost his God.” – Franklin D. Roosevelt
“I’m not the smartest fellow in the world, but I can sure pick smart colleagues.” – Franklin D. Roosevelt
“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.” – Franklin D. Roosevelt
“Enduring peace cannot be bought at the cost of other people’s freedom.” – Franklin D. Roosevelt
Source: Whitehouse Wikipedia Britannica millercenter history loc presidency si nationalgeographic