Leadership Quote by Franklin D. Roosevelt

Self-deprecation is doing real political work here. Roosevelt’s line looks like a shrug, but it’s a quiet manifesto for how power should operate in a modern state: not as the lone genius issuing commands, but as the manager of a crowded, specialized brain trust. Coming from a president who built the New Deal’s alphabet agencies and relied on a rotating cast of economists, lawyers, and policy improvisers, it doubles as a defense of complexity. If government is going to tackle mass unemployment and systemic collapse, the subtext goes, it can’t be run like a gentleman’s club of instincts and speeches. It has to be staffed like a machine.

The rhetorical trick is that it flatters everyone at once. Roosevelt lowers his own profile just enough to seem approachable, then raises it again by claiming a rarer talent: judgment. “Not the smartest” suggests humility; “pick smart colleagues” asserts an executive’s core competence, the skill that actually matters when decisions are too big for any one mind. It’s also a preemptive strike against the era’s critique of “experts” and bureaucracy. He isn’t surrendering authority to technocrats; he’s framing expertise as something a strong leader selects, orchestrates, and owns.

In the shadow of Depression and war, the line reads as a stabilizer. It reassures the public that leadership isn’t about omniscience; it’s about assembling competence, distributing responsibility, and making the final call when the roomful of smart people disagrees.