Franklin Roosevelt

PBS American Experience

Franklin Roosevelt (1882 – 1945):
[The] only thing we have to fear is fear itself …

[There] must be an end to a conduct in banking and in business which too often has given to a sacred trust the likeness of callous and selfish wrongdoing. …

[In] our progress toward a resumption of work we require two safeguards against a return of the evils of the old order:

• there must be a strict supervision of all banking and credits and investments, so that there will be an end to speculation with other people's money; and
• there must be provision for an adequate but sound currency. …

[We] now realize as we have never realized before, our interdependence on each other …
[That] we cannot merely take but we must give as well …
(First Inauguration Address, 4 March 1933)

Henry Fletcher (1873 – 1959) [Chairman, Republican National Committee, 1934-6]:
The New Deal is government from above.
It is based on the proposition that the people cannot manage their own affairs and that a government bureaucracy must manage for them.
(David Grubin, FDR, PBS American Experience, WGBH, 1994)

Franklin Roosevelt (1882 – 1945):
The time may be coming when the Germans and the Japs will do some fool thing that will put us in [the war].
That's the only real danger of our getting in.
(1940)