The virtues are lost in self-interest as rivers are lost in the sea.
Interpretation
Selfishness can overshadow our virtues, similar to how rivers disappear into the vastness of the sea.
Franklin D. Roosevelt highlights the idea that when individuals focus solely on their own interests, they neglect the virtues that guide moral behavior. Just as rivers eventually merge and lose their distinct identity in the vast sea, our noble traits can be overwhelmed by self-absorption, resulting in a diminished capacity for altruism and ethical conduct.
In practice
This quote could be used in a speech about the importance of community services over personal gain.
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.
...that in our state one man was to do one job, and the job he was naturally most suited for .. And further, we have often heard and often said that justice consists of minding your own business and not interfering with other people.
Sometimes small incidents, rather than glorious exploits, give us the best evidence of character. So, as portrait painters are more exact in doing the face, where the character is revealed, than the rest of the body, I must be allowed to give my more particular attention to the marks of the souls of men.
We may sing our hymns and psalms, and offer prayers, but they will be an abomination to God, unless we are willing to be thoroughly straightforward in our daily life.
But you see, a rich country like America can perhaps afford to be stupid.
When you get your,'Who am I?', question right, all of your,'What should I do?' questions tend to take care of themselves
Keep things at arm's length... If you let anything come too near you want to hold on to it. And there is nothing a man can hold on to.
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