in Quotes & Aphorisms (Enemy)
The enemy is strong. He may hurl back our forces. Success may not come with rushing speed, but we shall return again and again.
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Citations by Franklin Delano Roosevelt
He's a son-of-a-bitch, but he's our son-of-a-bitch.
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It is true that other Nations may, as they do, enforce contrary rules of conscience and conduct. It is true that policies may be pursued under flags other than our own, but those policies are beyond our jurisdiction. Yet in our inner individual lives we can never be indifferent, and we assert for ourselves complete freedom to embrace, to profess and to observe the principles for which our flag has so long been the lofty symbol. As it was so well said by James Madison, over a century ago: "We hold it for a fundamental and inalienable truth that religion and the manner of discharging it can be directed only by reason and conviction, not by force or violence."
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We know it because democracy alone has constructed an unlimited civilization capable of infinite progress in the improvement of human life.
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In the future days which we seek to make secure, we look forward to a world founded upon four essential human freedoms.
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The Congress has understood that under modern conditions government has a continuing responsibility to meet continuing problems, and that Government cannot take a holiday of a year, a month, or even a day just because a few people are tired or frightened by the inescapable pace of this modern world in which we live.
I am still convinced that the American people, since 1932, continue to insist on two requisites of private enterprise, and the relationship of Government to it. The first is complete honesty at the top in looking after the use of other people's money, and in apportioning and paying individual and corporate taxes according to ability to pay. The second is sincere respect for the need of all at the bottom to get work and through work to get a really fair share of the good things of life, and a chance to save and rise.
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In my Inaugural I laid down the simple proposition that nobody is going to starve in this country. 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.
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If the country is to flourish, capital must be invested in enterprise. But those who seek to draw upon other people's money must be wholly candid regarding the facts on which the investor's judgment is asked.
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The destiny of America was proclaimed in words of prophecy spoken by our first President in his first inaugural in 1789, words almost directed, it would seem, to this year of 1941: "The preservation of the sacred fire of liberty and the destiny of the republican model of government are justly considered deeply finally, staked on the experiment intrusted to the hands of the American people.
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It seldom helps to wonder how a statesman of one generation would surmount the crisis of another. A statesman deals with concrete difficulties, with things which must be done from day to day. Not often can he frame conscious patterns for the far off future. But the fullness of the stature of Lincoln's nature and the fundamental conflict which events forced upon his Presidency invite us ever to turn to him for help. For the issue which he restated here at Gettysburg seventy five years ago will be the continuing issue before this Nation so long as we cling to the purposes for which the Nation was founded: to preserve under the changing conditions of each generation a people's government for the people's good.
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