The Definitive FDR Quotes

“You and I are for Roosevelt because he’s a great spiritual figure, because he’s an idealist, like Wilson, and he’s got the guts to drive through against any opposition to realize those ideals…. Oh—there are a lot of small people in this town who are constantly trying to cut him down to their size, and sometimes they have some influence. But it’s your job and mine—as long as we’re around here—to keep reminding him that he’s unlimited, and that’s the way he’s got to talk because that’s the way he’s going to act….”
― James MacGregor Burns, The Definitive FDR: Roosevelt: The Lion and the Fox (1882–1940) and Roosevelt: The Soldier of Freedom

“STUDENTS OF HISTORY HAVE long observed the tendency of social movements to overflow their channels. Moderate reformers seize power from tired regimes and alter the traditional way of things, and then extremists wrest power from the moderates; a Robespierre succeeds a Danton; a Lenin succeeds a Kerensky. Often it is not actual suffering but the taste of better things that excites people to revolt.”
― James MacGregor Burns, The Definitive FDR: Roosevelt: The Lion and the Fox (1882–1940) and Roosevelt: The Soldier of Freedom

“Columbia Law School and Coolidge’s Attorney”
― James MacGregor Burns, The Definitive FDR: Roosevelt: The Lion and the Fox (1882–1940) and Roosevelt: The Soldier of Freedom

“he would run, the Missouri Senator told Roosevelt’s men, “but why the hell didn’t he tell me in the first place?”
― James MacGregor Burns, The Definitive FDR: Roosevelt: The Lion and the Fox (1882–1940) and Roosevelt: The Soldier of Freedom

“its major respects the national party is a holding company for complex and interlacing clusters of local groups”
― James MacGregor Burns, The Definitive FDR: Roosevelt: The Lion and the Fox (1882–1940) and Roosevelt: The Soldier of Freedom

“The American constitutional system had been devised to prevent easy capture of the government by popular majorities.”
― James MacGregor Burns, The Definitive FDR: Roosevelt: The Lion and the Fox (1882–1940) and Roosevelt: The Soldier of Freedom

“In America, as Mr. Dooley once remarked, people build their triumphal arches out of brick so that they will have something handy to throw at the hero when he comes through.”
― James MacGregor Burns, The Definitive FDR: Roosevelt: The Lion and the Fox (1882–1940) and Roosevelt: The Soldier of Freedom