Franklin Roosevelt

“ Several thousand Americans have met death in battle. Other thousands will lose their lives. But many millions stand ready to step into their places—to engage in a struggle to the very death. For they know that the enemy is determined to destroy us, our homes and our institutions- that in this war it is kill or be killed.
Battles are not won by soldiers or sailors who think first of their own personal safety. And wars are not won by people who are concerned primarily with their own comfort, their own convenience, their own pocketbooks.
We Americans of today bear the gravest of responsibilities. ”

“ I have the profound conviction that the American people are now determined to put forth a mightier effort than they have ever yet made to increase our production of all the implements of defense, to meet the threat to our democratic faith.
As President of the United States I call for that national effort. I call for it in the name of this nation which we love and honor and which we are privileged and proud to serve. I call upon our people with absolute confidence that our common cause will greatly succeeds. ”

“ It is not too much to say that we must pour into this war the entire strength and intelligence and will power of the United States. We are a great Nation- a rich Nation- but we are not so great or so rich that we can afford to waste our substance or the lives of our men by relaxing along the way.
We shall not settle for less than total victory. That is the determination of every American on the fighting fronts. That must be, and will be, the determination of every American here at home. ”

“ In these great problems of government I try not to forget that what really counts at the bottom of it all, is that the men and Women willing to work can have a decent job to take care of themselves and their homes and their children adequately; that the farmer, the factory worker, the storekeeper, the gas station man, the manufacturer, the merchant—big and small—the banker who takes pride in the help he gives to the building of his community, that all these can be sure of a reasonable profit and safety for the savings they earn—not today nor tomorrow alone, but as far ahead as they can see. ”

“ You have heard some people say that the British and the Americans can never get along well together—you have heard some people say that the Army and the Navy and the Air Forces can never get along well together- that real cooperation between them is impossible. Tunisia and Sicily have given the lie, once and for all, to these narrow-minded prejudices.
The dauntless fighting spirit of the British people in this war has been expressed in the historic words and deeds of Winston Churchill—and the world knows how the American people feel about him. ”

“ As I told the Congress yesterday, "sacrifice" is not exactly the proper word with which to describe this program of self-denial. When, at the end of this great struggle, we shall have saved our freeway of life, we shall have made no "sacrifice."
The price for civilization must be paid in hard work and sorrow and blood. The price is not too high. If you doubt it, ask those millions who live today under the tyranny of Hitlerisms.
Ask the workers of France and Norway and the Netherlands, whipped to labor by the lash, whether the stabilization of wages is too great a "sacrifice." ”

“ We want a Supreme Court which will do justice under the Constitution—not over it. In our Courts we want a government of laws and not of men.
I want—as all Americans want—an independent judiciary as proposed by the framers of the Constitution. That means a Supreme Court that will enforce the Constitution as written—that will refuse to amend the Constitution by the arbitrary exercise of judicial power—amendment by judicial say-so. It does not mean a judiciary so independent that it can deny the existence of facts universally recognized. ”

“ When we have ascertained the full facts of unemployment, we can extend the voluntary and neighborly character of this effort to the task of finding the solution to the perplexing problem. Its importance justifies a national approach, free from prejudice or partisanship and warrants the cooperative endeavors of business, of labor, of agriculture, and of government.
I am confident that this nation of ours has the genius to reorder its affairs, and possesses the physical resources to make it possible for everyone, young or old, to enjoy the opportunity to work and earn. ”

“ We reassert the ancient American doctrine of freedom of the seas. We reassert the solidarity of the twenty-one American Republics and the Dominion of Canada in the preservation of the independence of the hemisphere. We have pledged material support to the other democracies of the world -- and we will fulfill that pledge. We in the Americas will decide for ourselves whether, and when, and where, our American interests are attacked or our security threatened. We are placing our armed forces in strategic military position. We will not hesitate to use our armed forces to repel attack. ”

“ Tonight, on Christmas Eve, all men and women everywhere who love Christmas are thinking of that ancient town and of the star of faith that shone there more than nineteen centuries ago.
American boys are fighting today in snow-covered mountains, in malarial jungles, on blazing deserts; they are fighting on the far stretches of the sea and above the clouds, and fighting for the thing for which they struggle. ”

“ Tonight, in the face of a crisis of serious proportions in the coal industry, I say again that the spirit of this Nation is good. I know that the American people will not tolerate any threat offered to their Government by anyone. I believe the coal miners will not continue the strike against their Government. I believe that the coal miners as Americans will not fail to heed the clear call to duty. Like all other good Americans, they will march shoulder to shoulder with their armed forces to victory. ”

“ The overwhelming majority of all the people in the world want peace. Most of them are fighting for the attainment of peace- not just a truce, not just an armistice- but peace that is as strongly enforced and as durable as mortal man can make it. If we are willing to fight for peace now, is it not good logic that we should use force if necessary, in the future, to keep the peace? ”

“ I cannot prophesy the immediate economic effect of this new war on our nation, but I do say that no American has the moral right to profiteer at the expense either of his fellow citizens or of the men, the women and the children who are living and dying in the midst of war in Europe.
Some things we do know. Most of us in the United States believe in spiritual values. Most of us, regardless of what church we belong to, believe in the spirit of the New Testament—a great teaching which opposes itself to the use of force, of armed force, of marching armies and falling bombs. ”

“ If by democratic methods people get a government strong enough to protect them from fear and starvation, their democracy succeeds; but if they do not, they grow impatient. Therefore, the only sure bulwark of continuing liberty is a government strong enough to protect the interests of the people, and a people strong enough and well enough informed to maintain its sovereign control over its government.
We are a rich Nation; we can afford to pay for security and prosperity without having to sacrifice our liberties in the bargain. ”

“ We are mindful of the countless millions of people whose future liberty and whose very lives depend upon permanent victory for the United Nations.
There are a few people in this country who, when the collapse of the Axis begins, will tell our people that we are safe once more; that we can tell the rest of the world to "stew in its own juice"; that never again will we help to pull "the other fellow's chestnuts from the fire"; that the future of civilization can jolly well take care of itself insofar as we are concerned. ”

“ They are laboring under the delusion that the time is past when we must make prodigious sacrifices -- that the war is already won and we can begin to slacken off. But the dangerous folly of that point of view can be measured by the distance that separates our troops from their ultimate objectives in Berlin and Tokyo -- and by the sum of all the perils that lie along the way. Over-confidence and complacency are among our deadliest of all enemies.
And that attitude on the part of anyone -- Government or management or labor --can lengthen this war. It can kill American boys. ”

“ As planes and ships and guns and shells are produced, your Government, with its defense experts, can then determine how best to use them to defend this hemisphere. The decision as to how much shall be sent abroad and how much shall remain at home must be made on the basis of our over-all military necessities.
We must be the great arsenal of democracy. For us this is an emergency as serious as war itself. We must apply ourselves to our task with the same resolution, the same sense of urgency, the same spirit of patriotism and sacrifice as we would show were we at war. ”

“ On the basis of this simple principle of everybody doing things together, we are starting out on this nationwide attack on unemployment. It will succeed if our people understand it— in the big industries, in the little shops, in the great cities and in the small villages. There is nothing complicated about it and there is nothing particularly new in the principle. It goes back to the basic idea of society and of the Nation itself that people acting in a group can accomplish things which no individual acting alone could even hope to bring about. ”

“ All of this I said to the Congress today and I repeat it to you, the people of the country tonight.
I went on to point out to the Senate and the House of Representatives that all the energies of government and business must be directed to increasing the national income, to putting more people into private jobs, to giving security and a feeling of security to all people in all walks of life.
I am constantly thinking of all our people—unemployed and employed alike- of their human problems of food and clothing and homes and education and health and old age. ”

“ We all know that private banking actually exists by virtue of the permission of and regulation by the people as a whole, speaking through their Government. Wise public policy, however, requires not only that banking be safe but that its resources be most fully utilized in the economic life of the country. To this end it was decided more than twenty years ago that the Government should assume the responsibility of providing a means by which the credit of the Nation might be controlled, not by a few private banking institutions, but by a body with public prestige and authority. ”

“ We will not accept a Hitler-dominated world. And we will not accept a world, like the post-war world of the 1920's, in which the seeds of Hitlerism can again be planted and allowed to grow. We will accept only a world consecrated to freedom of speech and expression -- freedom of every person to worship God in his own way --freedom from want -- and freedom from (terrorism) terror. ”

“ Never in the memory of man has there been a war in which the courage, the endurance, and the loyalty of civilians played so vital a part.
Many thousands of civilians all over the world have been and are being killed or maimed by enemy action. Indeed, it was the fortitude of the common people of Britain under fire which enabled that island to stand and prevented Hitler from winning the war in 1940. The ruins of London and Coventry and other cities are today the proudest monuments to British heroism.
Our own American civilian population is now relatively safe from such disasters. ”

“ The United Nations constitute an association of independent peoples of equal dignity and equal importance. The United Nations are dedicated to a common cause. We share equally and with equal zeal the anguish and the awful sacrifices of war. In the partnership of our common enterprise, we must share in a unified plan in which all of us must play our several parts, each of us being equally indispensable and dependent one on the other. ”

“ The proposed "new order" is the very opposite of a United States of Europe or a United States of Asia. It is not a Government based upon the consent of the governed. It is not a union of ordinary, self-respecting men and women to protect themselves and their freedom and their dignity from oppression. It is an unholy alliance of power and pelf to dominate and to enslave the human race.
The British people and their allies today are conducting an active war against this unholy alliance. Our own future security is greatly dependent on the outcome of that fight. ”

“ I can say with utmost confidence that no Americans, today or a thousand years hence, need feel anything but pride in our patience and in our efforts through all the years toward achieving a peace in the Pacific which would be fair and honorable to every Nation, large or small. And no honest person, today or a thousand years hence, will be able to suppress a sense of indignation and horror at the treachery committed by the military dictators of Japan, under the very shadow of the flag of peace borne by their special envoys in our midst. ”

“ Endowed, as our nation is, with abundant physical resources, and inspired as it should be with the high purpose to make those resources and opportunities available for the enjoyment of all, we approach this problem of reemployment with the real hope of finding a better answer than we have now.
The Unemployment Census, as a sensible first step to a constructive re-employment program ought to be a successful bit of national team-work from which will come again that feeling of national solidarity which is the strength and the glory of the American people. ”

“ It is time for all Americans, Americans of all the Americas to stop being deluded by the romantic notion that the Americas can go on living happily and peacefully in a Nazi-dominated world.
Generation after generation, America has battled for the general policy of the freedom of the seas. And that policy is a very simple one-but a basic, a fundamental one. It means that no Nation has the right to make the broad oceans of the world at great distances from the actual theater of land war unsafe for the commerce of others. ”

“ It is not a sacrifice for the industrialist or the wage earner, the farmer or the shopkeeper, the trainman or the doctor, to pay more taxes, to buy more bonds, to forego extra profits, to work longer or harder at the task for which he is best fitted. Rather is it a privilege.
It is not a sacrifice to do without many things to which we are accustomed if the national defense calls for doing without. ”

“ If all of our people have work and fair wages and fair profits, they can buy the products of their neighbors, and business is good. But if you take away the wages and the profits of half of them, business is only half as good. It does not help much if the fortunate half is very prosperous; the best way is for everybody to be reasonably prosperous.
For many years the two great barriers to a normal prosperity have been low farm prices and the creeping paralysis of unemployment. These factors have cut the purchasing power of the country in half. ”

“ We will do it cheerfully, remembering that the common enemy seeks to destroy every home and every freedom in every part of our land.
This generation of Americans has come to realize, with a present and personal realization, that there is something larger and more important than the life of any individual or of any individual group- something for which a man will sacrifice, and gladly sacrifice, not only his pleasures, not only his goods, not only his associations with those he loves, but his life itself. ”