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Home > Dictionary of Science Quotations > Scientist Names Index R > Franklin D. Roosevelt Quotes

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Franklin D. Roosevelt
(30 Jan 1882 - 12 Apr 1945)

American president who was elected the 32nd President of the United States in Nov 1932, at the depth of the Great Depression, and served four terms. He introduced his New Deal program to bring recovery. Roosevelt was president when World War II broke out, but died shortly before its end.

Science Quotes by Franklin D. Roosevelt (6 quotes)

New frontiers of the mind are before us, and if they are pioneered with the same vision, boldness, and drive with which we have waged this war we can create a fuller and more fruitful employment and a fuller and more fruitful life.
— Franklin D. Roosevelt
Letter to Vannevar Bush (17 Nov 1944). As printed in Vannevar Bush, Science, the Endless Frontier: A report to the President (1945), viii.
Science quotes on:  |  Boldness (11)  |  Create (245)  |  Drive (61)  |  Employment (34)  |  Frontier (41)  |  Fruitful (61)  |  Life (1870)  |  Mind (1377)  |  More (2558)  |  New (1273)  |  Pioneer (37)  |  Vision (127)  |  Wage (7)  |  War (233)

The forests are the “lungs” of our land, purifying the air and giving fresh strength to our people.
— Franklin D. Roosevelt
From 'A Presidential Statement on Receipt of the Award of the Schlich Forestry Medal' (29 Jan 1935) in Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: F.D. Roosevelt, 1935, Volume 4 (1938), 65. Roosevelt was awarded the medal by the Society of American Foresters. This is seen in a number of sources incorrectly joined with Roosevelt’s quote about the nation destroying is soil (q.v.), but Webmaster has only been able to find primary sources for these as separate quotes.
Science quotes on:  |  Air (366)  |  Deforestation (50)  |  Forest (161)  |  Fresh (69)  |  Land (131)  |  Lung (37)  |  People (1031)  |  Purifying (2)  |  Strength (139)

The handling of our forests as a continuous, renewable resource means permanent employment and stability to our country life. The forests are also needed for mitigating extreme climatic fluctuations, holding the soil on the slopes, retaining the moisture in the ground, and controlling the equable flow of water in our streams.
— Franklin D. Roosevelt
From 'A Presidential Statement on Receipt of the Award of the Schlich Forestry Medal' (29 Jan 1935) in Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: F.D. Roosevelt, 1935, Volume 4 (1938), 65. Roosevelt was awarded the medal by the Society of American Foresters. This quote continues with the line “The forests are the ‘lungs’ of our land….”
Science quotes on:  |  Continuous (83)  |  Country (269)  |  Employment (34)  |  Extreme (78)  |  Flow (89)  |  Fluctuation (15)  |  Forest (161)  |  Forest Management (2)  |  Ground (222)  |  Handling (7)  |  Holding (3)  |  Hydrology (10)  |  Life (1870)  |  Mean (810)  |  Moisture (21)  |  Need (320)  |  Permanent (67)  |  Renewable (7)  |  Resource (74)  |  Slope (10)  |  Soil (98)  |  Soil Erosion (5)  |  Stability (28)  |  Stream (83)  |  Water (503)

The Nation that destroys its soil destroys itself.
— Franklin D. Roosevelt
Letter to all State Governors on a Uniform Soil Conservation Law (26 Feb 1937). This is seen in a number of sources incorrectly joined with Roosevelt’s quote about forests as the lungs of the earth (q.v.), but Webmaster has only been able to find primary sources for these as separate quotes.
Science quotes on:  |  Destroy (189)  |  Nation (208)  |  Soil (98)

The only limit to our realization of tomorrow will be our doubts of today.
— Franklin D. Roosevelt
…...
Science quotes on:  |  Doubt (314)  |  Limit (294)  |  Realization (44)  |  Today (321)  |  Tomorrow (63)  |  Will (2350)

You who are scientists may have been told that you are, in part, responsible for the debacle of today … but I assure you that it is not the scientists … who are responsible. … Surely it is time for our republics … to use every knowledge, every science that we possess. … You and I … will act together to protect and defend by every means … our science, our culture, our American freedom and our civilization.
— Franklin D. Roosevelt
Address (10 May 1940) to American Scientific Congress in Washington. This was the day the Nazis invaded the Low Countries. As quoted in Robert Coughlan, 'Dr. Edward Teller’s Magnificent Obsession', Life (6 Sep 1954), 64.
Science quotes on:  |  Act (278)  |  American (56)  |  Assure (16)  |  Civilization (220)  |  Culture (157)  |  Defend (32)  |  Freedom (145)  |  Knowledge (1647)  |  Mean (810)  |  Means (587)  |  Possess (157)  |  Protect (65)  |  Republic (16)  |  Responsible (19)  |  Science And Politics (16)  |  Scientist (881)  |  Surely (101)  |  Time (1911)  |  Today (321)  |  Together (392)  |  Use (771)  |  Will (2350)



Quotes by others about Franklin D. Roosevelt (1)

I had a plan for the NDRC in four short paragraphs in the middle of a sheet of paper. The whole audience lasted less than ten minutes… I came out with my 'OK - FDR' and all the wheels began to turn.
About Pres. Roosevelt’s approval for the National Defense Research Committee (NDRC), that was shortly subsumed into the U.S. Office of Scientific Research and Development (OSRD), which Bush headed. As quoted in Pieces of the Action (1970), 36.
Science quotes on:  |  Approval (12)  |  Science And Government (5)


See also:
  • FDR, by Jean Edward Smith. - book suggestion.

Carl Sagan Thumbnail In science it often happens that scientists say, 'You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken,' and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion. (1987) -- Carl Sagan
Quotations by:Albert EinsteinIsaac NewtonLord KelvinCharles DarwinSrinivasa RamanujanCarl SaganFlorence NightingaleThomas EdisonAristotleMarie CurieBenjamin FranklinWinston ChurchillGalileo GalileiSigmund FreudRobert BunsenLouis PasteurTheodore RooseveltAbraham LincolnRonald ReaganLeonardo DaVinciMichio KakuKarl PopperJohann GoetheRobert OppenheimerCharles Kettering  ... (more people)

Quotations about:Atomic  BombBiologyChemistryDeforestationEngineeringAnatomyAstronomyBacteriaBiochemistryBotanyConservationDinosaurEnvironmentFractalGeneticsGeologyHistory of ScienceInventionJupiterKnowledgeLoveMathematicsMeasurementMedicineNatural ResourceOrganic ChemistryPhysicsPhysicianQuantum TheoryResearchScience and ArtTeacherTechnologyUniverseVolcanoVirusWind PowerWomen ScientistsX-RaysYouthZoology  ... (more topics)
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Sophie Germain
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Ernest Rutherford
James Chadwick
Marcel Proust
William Harvey
Johann Goethe
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Carl Gauss
Paul Feyerabend
- 90 -
Antoine Lavoisier
Lise Meitner
Charles Babbage
Ibn Khaldun
Euclid
Ralph Emerson
Robert Bunsen
Frederick Banting
Andre Ampere
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- 80 -
John Locke
Bronislaw Malinowski
Bible
Thomas Huxley
Alessandro Volta
Erwin Schrodinger
Wilhelm Roentgen
Louis Pasteur
Bertrand Russell
Jean Lamarck
- 70 -
Samuel Morse
John Wheeler
Nicolaus Copernicus
Robert Fulton
Pierre Laplace
Humphry Davy
Thomas Edison
Lord Kelvin
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Carolus Linnaeus
- 60 -
Francis Galton
Linus Pauling
Immanuel Kant
Martin Fischer
Robert Boyle
Karl Popper
Paul Dirac
Avicenna
James Watson
William Shakespeare
- 50 -
Stephen Hawking
Niels Bohr
Nikola Tesla
Rachel Carson
Max Planck
Henry Adams
Richard Dawkins
Werner Heisenberg
Alfred Wegener
John Dalton
- 40 -
Pierre Fermat
Edward Wilson
Johannes Kepler
Gustave Eiffel
Giordano Bruno
JJ Thomson
Thomas Kuhn
Leonardo DaVinci
Archimedes
David Hume
- 30 -
Andreas Vesalius
Rudolf Virchow
Richard Feynman
James Hutton
Alexander Fleming
Emile Durkheim
Benjamin Franklin
Robert Oppenheimer
Robert Hooke
Charles Kettering
- 20 -
Carl Sagan
James Maxwell
Marie Curie
Rene Descartes
Francis Crick
Hippocrates
Michael Faraday
Srinivasa Ramanujan
Francis Bacon
Galileo Galilei
- 10 -
Aristotle
John Watson
Rosalind Franklin
Michio Kaku
Isaac Asimov
Charles Darwin
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