We think of our land and water and human resources not as static and sterile possessions but as life giving assets to be directed by wise provisions for future days.
Interpretation
This quote emphasizes the importance of treating natural resources as vital assets for the future rather than mere possessions.
Franklin D. Roosevelt's quote highlights the perspective that land, water, and human resources should be viewed as dynamic and essential elements for sustaining life. He advocates for a thoughtful and strategic approach to managing these resources, ensuring that they contribute positively to future generations rather than being exploited or neglected.
In practice
During a environmental conference, this quote can be used to emphasize the importance of sustainable resource management.
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.
Necessity is the mistress and guide of nature. Necessity is the theme and inventress of nature, her curb and her eternal law.
To a man, ornithologists are tall, slender, and bearded so that they can stand motionless for hours, imitating kindly trees, as they watch for birds.
Tree limbs rise and fall like the ecstatic arms of those who have submitted to the mystical life. Leaf sounds talk together like poets making fresh metaphors.
Despite all I have seen and experienced, I still get the same simple thrill out of glimpsing a tiny patch of snow in a high mountain gully and feel the same urge to climb towards it.
The day, water, sun, moon, night - I do not have to purchase these things with money.
I see the entire world as Eden, and every time you take an inch of it away, you must do so with respect.
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