John T. Flynn Quotes

They do not say Roosevelt saved our system. They say he has given us a new one. That is logical.

When Roosevelt came along, I approved of his program, generally. I figured an economic system should work for people, not vice versa.

The big policy wins of the New Deal were actually offered as compromises. Because the alternative seemed to be revolution.

Roosevelt's New Deal regulated business, protected social welfare and promoted national infrastructure on the principle that the role of government was not simply to protect the property of the wealthy, but rather was to promote equality of opportunity for all.

The point about Roosevelt's New Deal was that it was visionary - for the 1930s.

[Franklin Delano] Roosevelt started more creations than were ever finished since Genesis—and finished none.

Two thirds of a century ago, we were given a national policy. It was made to fit the conditions of the day.

If Roosevelt were alive today, he'd turn over in his grave.

Roosevelt or Ruin

Progressivism has time and again added the corrective that has enabled capitalism to survive.

I ascribe the New Deal as important almost on a par with the French Revolution – not merely an important event in the history of the United States, but the most important event in the history of the United States.

Explosion of positive rights started in 1932 with the election of Roosevelt.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt eventually became the greatest liberal leader of 20th century United States, but he started as a fiscal conservative. His greatness is founded in his willingness to change his mind to save his country from the Great Depression.

It is really quite amazing that all of the folks supporting privatization, from the president on down, keep invoking the name of my grandfather, Franklin Delano 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.

It isn't enough just to scream at the Occupy Wall Street demonstrations. We need our political system to start reflect this anger back into, 'How do we fix it? How do we get the economy going again?'

By 1939, the Depression was back. Unemployment was huge. Roosevelt didn't have any quick fix. Remember, the New Deal, Works Progress Administration, and Civilian Conservation Corps - all that happened years before. Roosevelt was riding a storm.

The New Deal was going to redistribute the national income according to ideals of social and economic justice.

The New Deal is plainly an attempt to achieve a working socialism and avert a social collapse in America; it is extraordinarily parallel to the successive 'policies' and 'Plans' of the Russian experiment. Americans shirk the word 'socialism', but what else can one call it?

The New Deal was a socialist revolution.

(Referring to General Hugh Johnson, administrator of the National Recovery Administration:)) ... a comic opera cream puff.

FDR's New Deal and, after it, Republican President Dwight Eisenhower's similar Middle Way, used the government to regulate business, provide a basic social safety net, and promote infrastructure, like roads and bridges.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt had to find a way to help the American people. In 1933, he created a relief program known as the New Deal. Two years later, he expanded the New Deal by adding the Works Progress Administration, which was renamed the Work Projects Administration in 1939.

Americans are conservative. What they want to conserve is the New Deal.

There have been two periods in my lifetime when the excitement of government and of public issues drew to Washington many of the bright young people graduating from colleges and law schools. These were essentially the Roosevelt and the Kennedy years.