I never forget I live in a house owned by the American people [View All]

I never forget that I live in a house owned by all the American people and that I have been given their trust. I try always to remember that their deepest problems are human. I constantly talk with those who come to tell me their own points of view; with those who manage great industries and financial institutions of the the country; with those who represent the farmer and the worker; and often, very often with average citizens without high position who come to this house.

And I constantly seek to look beyond the doors of the White House, beyond the officialdom of the national capital, into the hopes and fears of men and women in their homes. I have traveled the country over many times. My friends, my enemies, my daily mail, bring to me reports of what you are thinking and hoping.

I want to be sure that neither battles nor burdens of office shall ever blind me to an intimate knowledge of the way the American people want to live and the simple purposes for which they put me here...I always try to remember that reconciling differences cannot satisfy everyone completely. Because I do not expect too much then I am not disappointed. But I know that I must never give up-that I must never let the greater interest of all the people down, merely because that might be for the moment the easiest personal way out.

FDR, Fireside chat, April 14, 1938, from the book FDR's Fireside Chats Oklahoma Press, 1992 pages 122-123