"No sane local official who has hung up an empty stocking over the municipal fireplace is going to shoot Santa Claus just before a hard Christmas."
"The thing we have to fear in this country, to my way of thinking, is the influence of the organized minorities, because somehow or other the great majority does not seem to organize. They seem to feel that they are going to be effective because of their own strength, but they give no expression of it."
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Source: Speech in Albany, 27 June 1933, in New York Times 28 June 1933
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"Be sincere. Be simple in words, manners, and gestures. Amuse as well as instruct. If you can make a man laugh, you can make him think and make him like and believe you."
"It is a confession of the weakness of our own faith in the righteousness of our cause when we attempt to suppress by law those who do not agree with us."
"The American people never carry an umbrella. They prepare to walk in eternal sunshine."
"I can think of no greater disaster to this country than to have the voters of it divide upon religious lines."
"I believe in absolute freedom of conscience for all men and equality of all churches, all sects and all beliefs before the law as a matter of right and not as a matter of favor. I believe in the absolute separation of church and state and in the strict enforcement of the Constitution that Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof I believe that no tribunal of any church has any power to make any decree of any force in the law of the land, other than to establish the status of its own communicants within its own church."