#roosevelt

Few expected very much of Franklin Roosevelt on Inauguration Day in 1933. Like Barack Obama seventy-six years later, he was succeeding a failed Republican president, and Americans had voted for change. What that change might be Roosevelt never clearly said, probably because he himself didn't know. ↗

— Russell Baker

#barack obama #because #change #clearly #day

Roosevelt's declaration that Americans had 'nothing to fear but fear itself' was a glorious piece of inspirational rhetoric and just as gloriously wrong. ↗

— Russell Baker

#fear #glorious #gloriously #had #inspirational

I don't want to go negative on Franklin Delano Roosevelt, but he didn't pass an economic deal in the first 100 days. We have passed the largest Recovery Act in the history of the country. ↗

— Rahm Emanuel

#country #days #deal #delano #economic

There used to be this feeling under Eisenhower and Kennedy and Roosevelt and Truman that government was a solution. Trust in the presidency fell precipitously under Johnson - real lows. And it's never come back. It's a trend that, if you're liberal, is really discouraging. ↗

— Robert Caro

#come #discouraging #eisenhower #feeling #fell

Roosevelt's humor was broad, his manner friendly. Of wit there was little; of philosophy, none. What did he possess? Intuition, inspiration, love of adventure. ↗

— Emanuel Celler

#broad #did #friendly #his #humor

But no one can praise Roosevelt for doing this and then insist that he restored our traditional political and economic systems to their former vitality. ↗

— John T. Flynn

#economic #former #insist #our #political

Yet there was no doubt that Theodore Roosevelt was peculiarly qualified to be President of all the people. Few, if any Americans could match the breadth of his intellect and the strength of his character. A random survey of his achievements might show him mastering German, French, and the contrasted dialects of Harvard and Dakota Territory; assembling fossil skeletons with paleontological skill; fighting for an amateur boxing championship; transcribing birdsong into a private system of phonetics; chasing boat thieves with a star on his breast and Tolstoy in his pocket; founding a finance club, a stockmen's association, and a hunting-conservation society; reading some twenty thousand books and writing fifteen of his own; climbing the Matterhorn; promulgating a flying machine; and becoming a world authority on North American game mammals. If the sum of all these facets of experience added up to more than a geometric whole - implying excess construction somewhere, planes piling upon planes - then only he, presumably, could view the polygon entire. ↗

— Edmund Morris

#teddy #theodore #experience

Roosevelt was the one who had the vision to change our policy from isolationism to world leadership. That was a terrific revolution. Our country's never been the same since. ↗

— W. Averell Harriman

#change #country #had #isolationism #leadership

Franklin Roosevelt said the test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance to those who have much; it is whether we provide enough to those who have too little. This reconciliation package fails that test as well. ↗

— Patrick J. Kennedy

#add #enough #fails #franklin #franklin roosevelt

I think Democrats made a mistake running away from liberalism. Liberalism, uh, Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, John and Robert Kennedy - that's what the Democratic party ought to reach for. ↗

— Theodore C. Sorensen

#democratic #democratic party #democrats #franklin #franklin roosevelt