Franklin D. Roosevelt

32nd President of the United States, 1882–1945. 1 explained quote.

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“The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.”

Franklin D. Roosevelt · 1933

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“The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.”

Franklin D. Roosevelt · First Inaugural Address · 1933 · Politician

Said to a country in the depths of the Great Depression, days before he closed the banks. It was a plea to stop a panic that was making the crisis worse, not a general saying about bravery.

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About Franklin D. Roosevelt

Franklin Delano Roosevelt led the United States from 1933 until his death in April 1945, through the Great Depression and most of the Second World War. He is the only president elected four times, and his New Deal programs reshaped the relationship between Americans and their federal government.

Roosevelt was a powerful speaker who understood the new medium of radio better than any politician before him. His “fireside chats” explained banking, war and policy in plain language to listeners in their living rooms, and several lines from his speeches, from “fear itself” to “a date which will live in infamy”, are still among the most quoted in American history. He had lost the use of his legs to a paralytic illness in 1921, a fact the press of his time largely kept out of photographs.

More lines by Roosevelt

Short quotes checked against their sources.

“Yesterday, December 7, 1941—a date which will live in infamy—the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan.”
Address to Congress requesting a declaration of war, 1941