To bring about government by oligarchy, masquerading as democracy, it is fundamentally essential that practically all authority and control be centralized in our Federal government. . . The individual sovereignty of our states must first be destroyed.

The first theory is that if we make the rich richer, somehow they will let a part of their prosperity trickle down to the rest of us. The second theory was the theory that if we make the average of mankind comfortable and secure, their prosperity will rise upward through the ranks.

We must especially beware of that small group of selfish men who would clip the wings of the American Eagle in order to feather their own nests.

It is an unfortunate human failing that a full pocketbook often groans more loudly than an empty stomach.

In this nation I see tens of millions of its citizens, a substantial part of its whole population, who at this very moment are denied the greater part of what the very lowest standards of today call the necessities of life. I see one third of a nation ill-housed, ill-clad, ill-nourished. The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much, it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little.

People acting together as a group can accomplish things which no individual acting alone could ever hope to bring about.

A good leader can't get too far ahead of his followers.