FRANKLIN DELANO ROOSEVELT I hope that you will pardon me for this unusual posture of sitting down during the presentation of what I want to say, but I know that you will realize that it makes it a lot easier for me not to have to carry about ten pounds of steel around on the…

FRANKLIN DELANO ROOSEVELT MR. Chief Justice, Mr. Vice President, my friends, you will understand and, I believe, agree with my wish that the form of this inauguration be simple and its words brief. 1 We Americans of today, together with our allies, are passing through a period of supreme test. It is a test of…

FRANKLIN DELANO ROOSEVELT Mr. Vice President, Mr. Speaker, Members of the Senate, and of the House of Representatives: Yesterday, December 7th, 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. The United States was…

FRANKLIN DELANO ROOSEVELT President Reynolds, my friends, this dinner of the White House Correspondents is unique. It is the first one at which I have made a speech in all these eight years. It differs from the press conferences that you and I hold twice a week, for you cannot ask me any questions tonight,…

FRANKLIN DELANO ROOSEVELT ON each national day of inauguration since 1789, the people have renewed their sense of dedication to the United States. 1 In Washington’s day the task of the people was to create and weld together a nation.2 In Lincoln’s day the task of the people was to preserve that Nation from disruption…

FRANKLIN DELANO ROOSEVELT Mr. President, Mr. Speaker, members of the 77th Congress: I address you, the members of this new Congress, at a moment unprecedented in the history of the union. I use the word “unprecedented” because at no previous time has American security been as seriously threatened from without as it is today. Since…

FRANKLIN DELANO ROOSEVELT My friends: This is not a fireside chat on war. It is a talk on national security; because the nub of the whole purpose of your President is to keep you now, and your children later, and your grandchildren much later, out of a last-ditch war for the preservation of American independence,…

FRANKLIN DELANO ROOSEVELT I am glad to come once again to Chicago and especially to have the opportunity of taking part in the dedication of this important project of civic betterment. On my trip across the continent and back I have been shown many evidences of the result of common sense cooperation between municipalities and…

FRANKLIN DELANO ROOSEVELT The time has arrived for us to take further action to extend the frontiers of social progress. Such further action initiated by the legislative branch of the government, administered by the executive, and sustained by the judicial, is within the common sense framework and purpose of our Constitution and receives beyond doubt…

FRANKLIN DELANO ROOSEVELT WHEN four years ago we met to inaugurate a President, the Republic, single-minded in anxiety, stood in spirit here. We dedicated ourselves to the fulfillment of a vision—to speed the time when there would be for all the people that security and peace essential to the pursuit of happiness. We of the…