No country, however rich, can afford the waste of its human resources. Demoralization caused by vast unemployment is our greatest extravagance. Morally, it is the greatest menace to our social order.
Interpretation
Wasting human potential through unemployment harms society and the economy.
Franklin D. Roosevelt's quote highlights the crucial importance of human resources for any nation's prosperity. He argues that when individuals are left unemployed and demoralized, it not only represents a significant waste of potential but also poses a moral threat to the fabric of society, as it can lead to social unrest and disintegration.
In practice
In a speech about social justice, a leader might reference this quote to emphasize the importance of investing in job creation.
There has been one persistent theme through all Axis propaganda. This theme has been that Americans are admittedly rich, that Americans have considerable industrial power - but that Americans are soft and decadent, that they cannot and will not unite and work and fight. ... Let them tell that to the Marines!
The only limit to our realization of tomorrow will be our doubts of today.
A war of ideas can no more be won without books than a naval war can be won without ships. Books, like ships, have the toughest armor, the longest cruising range, and mount the most powerful guns.
Better the occasional faults of a government that lives in a spirit of charity than the consistent omissions of a government frozen in the ice of its own indifference.
Men are not prisoners of fate, but only prisoners of their own minds.
A world turned into a stereotype, a society converted into a regiment, a life translated into a routine, make it difficult for either art or artists to survive. Crush individuality in society and you crush art as well. Nourish the conditions of a free life and you nourish the arts, too.
The consumer, so it is said, is the king each is a voter who uses his money as votes to get the things done that he wants done.
Socialism failed because it couldn't tell the economic truth. Capitalism may fail because it couldn't tell the ecological truth.
Unless you reduce the long-term spending burden, you cannot cut taxes in any lasting way, but can only shift the burden of taxes from the present to the future.
No complaint... is more common than that of a scarcity of money.
The big bankers of the world, who practise the terrorism of money, are more powerful than kings and field marshals, even more than the Pope of Rome himself. They never dirty their hands. They kill no-one: they limit themselves to applauding the show.
As the prosperity of the nation and the height of wage rates depend on a continual increase in the capital invested in its plants, mines and farms, it is one of the foremost tasks of good government to remove all obstacles that hinder the accumulation and investment of new capital.
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