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Other authors named Franklin:
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Author's popularity: -1
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Vote: | A conservative is a man with two perfectly good legs who, however, has never learned how to walk forward. |
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Vote: | A nation that destroys it's soils destroys itself. Forests are the lungs of our land, purifying the air and giving fresh strength to our people. |
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Vote: | Are you laboring under the impression that I read these memoranda of yours? I can't even lift them. |
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Vote: | Be sincere; be brief; be seated. |
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Vote: | Confidence... thrives on honesty, on honor, on the sacredness of obligations, on faithful protection and on unselfish performance. Without them it cannot live. |
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Vote: | Favor comes because for a brief moment in the great space of human change and progress some general human purpose finds in him a satisfactory embodiment. |
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Vote: | Happiness lies in the joy of achievement and the thrill of creative effort. |
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Vote: | Here is my principle: Taxes shall be levied according to ability to pay. That is the only American principle. |
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Vote: | 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. |
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Vote: | I ask you to judge me by the enemies I have made. |
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Vote: | I pledge you, I pledge myself, to a new deal for the American people. |
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Vote: | I think we consider too much the good luck of the early bird and not enough the bad luck of the early worm. |
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Vote: | I'm not the smartest fellow in the world, but I can sure pick smart colleagues. |
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Vote: | 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. |
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Vote: | If you treat people right they will treat you right... ninety percent of the time. |
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Vote: | In our seeking for economic and political progress, we all go up - or else we all go down. |
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Vote: | In politics, nothing happens by accident. If it happens, you can bet it was planned that way. |
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Vote: | It is an unfortunate human failing that a full pocketbook often groans more loudly than an empty stomach. |
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Vote: | 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. |
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Vote: | 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. |
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Vote: | Let us never forget that government is ourselves and not an alien power over us. The ultimate rulers of our democracy are not a President and senators and congressmen and government officials, but the voters of this country. |
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Vote: | Men are not prisoners of fate, but only prisoners of their own minds. |
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Vote: | More than an end to war, we want an end to the beginning of all wars - yes, an end to this brutal, inhuman and thoroughly impractical method of settling the differences between governments. |
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Vote: | One thing is sure. We have to do something. We have to do the best we know how at the moment... If it doesn't turn out right, we can modify it as we go along. |
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Vote: | Put two or three men in positions of conflicting authority. This will force them to work at loggerheads, allowing you to be the ultimate arbiter. |
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Vote: | Remember you are just an extra in everyone else's play. |
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Vote: | Rules are not necessarily sacred, principles are. |
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Vote: | Self-interest is the enemy of all true affection. |
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Vote: | Selfishness is the only real atheism; aspiration, unselfishness, the only real religion. |
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Vote: | Somoza may be a son of a bitch, but he's our son of a bitch. |
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Vote: | Take a method and try it. If it fails, admit it frankly, and try another. But by all means, try something. |
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Vote: | The liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it comes strong than their democratic state itself. That, in its essence, is fascism - ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or any controlling private power. |
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Vote: | The only limit to our realization of tomorrow will be our doubts of today. |
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Vote: | 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. |
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Vote: | The only thing we have to fear is fear itself. |
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Vote: | The point in history at which we stand is full of promise and danger. The world will either move forward toward unity and widely shared prosperity - or it will move apart. |
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Vote: | 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 little. |
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Vote: | The virtues are lost in self-interest as rivers are lost in the sea. |
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Vote: | There are as many opinions as there are experts. |
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Vote: | There are many ways of going forward, but only one way of standing still. |
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Vote: | There is nothing I love as much as a good fight. |
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Vote: | There is nothing to fear but fear itself. |
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Vote: | To reach a port, we must sail - sail, not tie at anchor - sail, not drift. |
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Vote: | 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. |
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Vote: | We continue to recognize the greater ability of some to earn more than others. But we do assert that the ambition of the individual to obtain for him a proper security is an ambition to be preferred to the appetite for great wealth and great power. |
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Vote: | We have always known that heedless self-interest was bad morals; we now know that it is bad economics. |
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Vote: | When you get to the end of your rope, tie a knot and hang on. |
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Vote: | Yesterday, December seventh, 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. |
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Biography
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Franklin Delano Roosevelt (January 30, 1882–April 12, 1945), 32nd President of the United States, the longest-serving holder of the office and the only man to be elected President more than twice, was one of the central figures of 20th century history. Born to wealth and privilege, he overcame a crippling illness to place himself at the head of the forces of reform. His family and close friends called him Frank. To the public he was usually known as "FDR."
Roosevelt's inspirational leadership helped the United States recover from the Great Depression according to many historians, but others dispute this claim arguing that Roosevelt's economic policies actually slowed recovery. In the build up to the Second World War, he prepared the USA to be the "Arsenal of Democracy" against Nazi Germany and the Japanese Empire, but aspects of his leadership, particularly what is seen as his naïve attitude toward Joseph Stalin, are criticized by some historians. Finally his vision of an effective international organization to preserve peace was brought to fruition as the United Nations after his death.
In his lifetime Roosevelt was a polarizing figure: he was a hero to liberals and a hated figure to conservatives. Today opinions of him are more complex. Some liberals criticise measures such as the internment of the Japanese-Americans during World War II and his failure to advance civil rights for African Americans. Some conservatives such as Ronald Reagan have praised his national leadership, while dismantling his social programs.
Early life
Franklin Roosevelt was born at Hyde Park, in the Hudson River valley in upstate New York. His father, James Roosevelt (1828–1900), was a wealthy landowner and Vice-President of the Delaware & Hudson Railway. The Roosevelt family (see Roosevelt family tree) had lived in New York more than 200 years: Claes van Rosenvelt, originally from Haarlem in the Netherlands, arrived in New York (then called Nieuw Amsterdam) in about 1650. In 1788 Isaac Roosevelt was a member of the state convention in Poughkeepsie which voted to ratify the United States Constitution—a matter of great pride to his great-great-grandson Franklin.
In the 18th century the Roosevelt family had divided into two branches, the "Hyde Park Roosevelts," who by the late 19th century were Democrats, and the "Oyster Bay Roosevelts," who were Republicans. President Theodore Roosevelt, an Oyster Bay Republican, was Franklin Roosevelt's fifth cousin. Despite their political differences, the two branches remained friendly: James Roosevelt met his wife at a Roosevelt family gathering at Oyster Bay, and Franklin was to marry Theodore Roosevelt's niece.
Roosevelt's mother Sara Delano (1854–1941) was of French Protestant (Huguenot) descent, her ancestor Phillippe de la Noye having arrived in Massachusetts in 1621. Her mother was a Lyman, another very old American family. Franklin was her only child, and she was an extremely possessive mother. Since James was a rather remote father (he was 54 when Franklin was born), Sara was the dominant influence in Franklin's early years. He later told friends that he was afraid of her all his life. He received his early education at home under her supervision.
Roosevelt grew up in an atmosphere of privilege. He learned to ride, to shoot, to row and to play polo and lawn tennis. Frequent trips to Europe made him fluent in German and French. He acquired a conventional set of upper class attitudes, and also a strong streak of anti-Semitism from his mother which he would later have to confront. The fact that his father was a Democrat, however, set him apart to some extent from most other members of the Hudson Valley aristocracy. The Roosevelts believed in public service, and were wealthy enough to be able to spend time and money on philanthropy.
This was reinforced by Roosevelt's schooling at Groton, an elite Episcopalian boarding school in Massachusetts. He was heavily influenced by the headmaster, Endicott Peabody, who preached the duty of Christians to help the less fortunate and urged his students to enter public service—although most of them in fact entered banks and Wall Street law firms. Roosevelt graduated from Groton in 1900, and naturally progressed to Harvard University, where he enjoyed himself in conventional fashion and graduated with an AB (arts degree) in 1904 without much serious study. While he was at Harvard his cousin Theodore became President, and his vigorous leadership style and reforming zeal made him Franklin's role model. In 1903 he met his future wife Eleanor Roosevelt, Theodore's niece, at a White House reception. (They had previously met as children, but this was their first serious encounter.)
Roosevelt next attended the Columbia Law School. He passed the bar exam and completed the requirements for a law degree in 1907 but did not bother to actually graduate. In 1908 he took a job with the prestigious Wall Street firm of Carter, Ledyard and Milburn, dealing mainly with corporate law. Meanwhile he had become engaged to Eleanor, despite the fierce resistance of Sara Roosevelt, who was terrified of losing control of Franklin. They were married in March 1905, and moved into a house bought for them by Sara, who became a frequent house-guest, much to Eleanor's mortification. Eleanor was painfully shy and hated social life, and at first she desired nothing more than to stay at home and raise Franklin's children, of which they had six in rapid succession: Anna (1906–1975), James (1907–1991), Franklin Jr (March to November 1909), Elliott (1910–1990), a second Franklin Jr. (1914–1988), and John (1916–1981).
(The five surviving Roosevelt children all led tumultuous lives overshadowed by their famous parents. They had between them fifteen marriages, ten divorces and twenty-nine children. All four sons were officers in World War II and were decorated, on merit, for bravery. Their postwar careers, whether in business or politics, were disappointing. Two of them were elected briefly to the House of Representatives but none attained higher office despite several attempts. One became a Republican.)
...(more on Wikipedia)
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This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Franklin D. Roosevelt".
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