Franklin Delano Roosevelt

Franklin Delano Roosevelt (30 January 1882 - 12 April 1945) 32nd President of the U.S. ; husband of Eleanor Roosevelt

Sourced

• "This is preeminently the time to speak the truth, the whole truth, frankly and boldly. Nor need we shrink from honestly facing conditions in our country today. This great Nation will endure as it has endured, will revive and will prosper. So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself —nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance. In every dark hour of our national life a leadership of frankness and vigor has met with that understanding and support of the people themselves which is essential to victory."
  • First Inaugural Address (March 4, 1933)

• "The Nation that destroys its soil destroys itself."
  • Letter to all State Governors on a Uniform Soil Conservation Law (February 26, 1937)

• "In the future days which we seek to make secure, we look forward to a world founded upon four essential human freedoms.
  The first is freedom of speech and expression —everywhere in the world.
  The second is freedom of every person to worship God in his own way —everywhere in the world.
  The third is freedom from want, which, translated into world terms, means economic understandings which will secure to every nation a healthy peacetime life for its inhabitants —everywhere in the world.
  The fourth is freedom from fear, which, translated into world terms, means a world-wide reduction of armaments to such a point and in such a thorough fashion that no nation will be in a position to commit an act of physical aggression against any neighbor —anywhere in the world.
  That is no vision of a distant millennium. It is a definite basis for a kind of world attainable in our own time and generation."
  • The Four Freedoms Speech (January 6, 1941)

• "If the fires of freedom and civil liberties burn low in other lands, they must be made brighter in our own. If in other lands the press and books and literature of all kinds are censored, we must redouble our efforts here to keep them free. If in other lands the eternal truths of the past are threatened by intolerance we must provide a safe place for their perpetuation."
  • Address to the National Education Association, 1938

• “I have seen the war. I have seen war on land and sea. I have seen blood running from the wounded. I have seen the dead in the mud. I have seen cities destroyed. I have seen children starving. I have seen the agony of mothers and wives. I hate war.”
  • From the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial

Attributed

• "Be sincere; be brief; be seated."

External links

• Works by Franklin D. Roosevelt on Wikisource
• Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library
• Speeches of FDR
• Franklin & Eleanor Roosevelt Institute