Leadership: In Turbulent Times Quotes
"Every man is said to have his peculiar ambition."
"I have no other so great as that of being truly esteemed of my fellow men, by rendering myself worthy of their esteem."
"If the good people in their wisdom shall see fit to keep me in the background, I have been too familiar with disappointments to be very much chagrined."
"All that I am or hope ever to be I get from my mother."
"My mind is like a piece of steel—very hard to scratch anything on it, and almost impossible after you get it there to rub it out."
"I do not think I ever got angry at anything else in my life."
"He combined strength and courage with gentleness, tenderness, and great unselfishness."
"The real things of life were getting a grip on him more and more."
"All that is in me goes back to the Hudson." - Franklin Roosevelt
"Never," Sara claimed, did Franklin observe conflict between his parents regarding his upbringing.
"Pain-killing can itself be a lethal act." - John Boettiger Jr.
"I would be ashamed of myself if I couldn’t do at least two things at once." - Franklin Roosevelt
"The surest way to be happy is to seek happiness for others." - Eleanor Roosevelt
"You and Eleanor are true and brave, and I believe you love each other unselfishly; and golden years open before you." - Theodore Roosevelt
"I’m a prairie dog lawyer from Johnson City, Texas." - Lyndon Johnson
"If you can’t come into a room full of people and tell right away who is for you and who is against you, you have no business in politics." - Sam Johnson
"I’m very sorry, but you’ve cornered the market for supplies. You’ll have to divide up with the Army." - Woodrow Wilson to Franklin Roosevelt
"My God, I didn’t know anyone lived like that." - Lyndon Johnson
"I’m ambitious, proud, energetic and madly in love with you."
"He was constitutionally impatient; she was constitutionally calm."
"I don’t care how hard I worked, I was always behind."
"If we have no friends, we have no pleasure; and if we have them, we are sure to lose them, and be doubly pained by the loss."
"To remain as I am is impossible; I must die or be better, it appears to me."
"I am glad I made the late race. It gave me a hearing on the great and durable question of the age, which I could have had in no other way."
"Let us return [slavery] to the position our fathers gave it."
"The greatest passion he harbored, he confessed to Speed, was 'to link his name with something that would redound to the interest of his fellow man.'"
"He had greater power of application. Once fixing his mind on any subject, nothing could interfere with or disturb him."
"No man of this generation has grown more rapidly before the country than Lincoln in this canvass."
"This victory was the culmination of a different ambition than that of a twenty-three-year-old who had striven to bolster his self-worth by the esteem in which he was held by his fellow men."
"It was a grim and evil fate, but I have never believed it did any good to flinch or yield for any blow, nor does it lighten the blow to cease from working."
"He seemed ‘a changed man,’ remarked his colleague Isaac Hunt; ‘from that time on there was a sadness about his face that he never had before.’"
"Theodore Beware of Ambition: By that sin has fallen many another young man as promising as you."
"So began a sojourn on the western frontier he would come to regard as ‘the most important educational asset’ of his entire life."
"In selecting the four-member team to manage his ranching operations, Roosevelt revealed the characteristic sure touch with which he would choose associates in the years ahead."
"The positive image he projected, so starkly incongruous from the ordeal he was confronting, was not simply to protect others but to buoy his own spirits."
"Fueled by resolution, perseverance, and newly acquired patience, he set forth on the tortuous journey to reclaim his 'rebellious' body."
"He regained his joy in living, his hearty laughter, his ability to be happy over little things."
"If you spent two years in bed trying to wiggle your big toe, anything would seem easy!"
"In his never-ending search for treatment, Roosevelt deployed a 'trial and error' method, an indelible fingerprint of his leadership style."
"The shared vulnerability revealed in these letters represented the first flowering of a new humility of spirit."
"If he didn’t have political hope, he would die spiritually, die intellectually, and die in his personality."
"He might have been happier with a wife who was completely uncritical. That I was never able to be."
"The State was created by the people for their 'mutual protection and well-being'."
"He had developed a powerful new empathy, allowing him to connect emotionally with all manner of people to whom fate had also dealt an unkind blow."
"We’ve got to look after these people, that’s what we’re here for."
"A man watches his pear-tree day after day, impatient for the ripening of the fruit. Let him attempt to force the process, and he may spoil both fruit and tree. But let him patiently wait, and the ripe pear at length falls into his lap!"
"I claim not to have controlled events, but confess plainly that events have controlled me."
"The infectiousness of his exuberant vitality made the country realize there was a new man in the White House."
"If you stand as one man and stand long enough and strong enough, you will win; if you divide, you will lose."
"I have the common pride of humanity to wish my past four years administration endorsed."
"A country that is worth living in time of peace is worth fighting for in time of war."
"I have only been an instrument. The antislavery people of the country and the army have done it all."
"No one, not in my situation, can appreciate my feeling of sadness at this parting."
"As our case is new, so we must think anew, and act anew."
"It is a dreadful thing to come into the Presidency this way; but it would be a far worse thing to be morbid about it."
"The people of the United States have not failed."
"Our first task is to reopen all sound banks."
"It is never well to take drastic action if the result can be achieved with equal efficiency in less drastic fashion."
"I am able to do all the important work, like that affecting the coal strike, just exactly as well as if I were on two legs."
"The time left on the clock before this fuel famine spread untold misery and spilled blood had nearly run out."
"I shall never forget the mixture of relief and amusement I felt when I thoroughly grasped the fact that while they would heroically submit to anarchy rather than have Tweedledum, yet if I would call it Tweedledee they would accept with rapture."
"Direct quotations must be cleared with Press Secretary Steve Early."
"Roosevelt envisioned regular biweekly press conferences as settings for mutual education, not confrontation."
"We were antagonists, but we liked each other and we had a perfect understanding of what each was trying to do."
"Tell the story simply, directly to the people."
"Address systemic problems. Launch lasting reforms."
"Be open to experiment. Design flexible agencies to deal with new problems."
"Stimulate competition and debate. Encourage creativity."
"Open channels of unfiltered information to supplement and challenge official sources."
"Adapt. Be ready to change course quickly when necessary."
"Momentum is not a mysterious mistress. It is a controllable fact of political life that depends on nothing more exotic than preparation."
"I speak tonight for the dignity of man and the destiny of democracy."
"There is no Negro problem. There is no Southern problem. There is only an American problem."
"Their cause must be our cause too. Because it is not just Negroes, but really it is all of us, who must overcome the crippling legacy of bigotry and injustice."
"My experience in the NYA taught me that when people have a hand in shaping projects, these projects are more likely to be successful than the ones simply handed down from the top."
"There is but one way for a President to deal with Congress, and that is continuously, incessantly, and without interruption."
"Somehow you never forget what poverty and hatred can do when you see its scars on the hopeful face of a young child."
"I never thought then, in 1928, that I would be standing here in 1965."
"I could see and almost touch my youthful dream of improving life for more people than any other leader including FDR."
"The right man at the right time in the right place had come as close as any president to envisioning and pursuing what Abraham Lincoln had once defined as the object of a free government."