It is an unfortunate human failing that a full pocketbook often groans more loudly than an empty stomach.

The line contrasts two kinds of “complaint”: the loud grievances of those with money (“a full pocketbook”) versus the often-muted suffering of those lacking basic necessities (“an empty stomach”). It criticizes a recurring social dynamic in which the relatively comfortable can dominate public attention and political debate, while hunger and poverty—more urgent harms—are easier to ignore. Attributed to Roosevelt, it fits the moral rhetoric associated with Depression-era politics: a call to prioritize material need over the anxieties of wealth and to recognize how privilege can amplify its own discomforts. The aphorism’s bite lies in its inversion of expectation: abundance, not deprivation, is portrayed as the noisier source of protest.