First Inaugural Address ("The only thing we have to fear")

Summary

Franklin Roosevelt was inaugurated on Saturday, 4 March 1933, at the low point of the Great Depression. About a quarter of the work force was unemployed, farm prices had collapsed, and in the weeks before the ceremony a wave of bank runs had led governors in most states to close or restrict their banks. The address, spoken from the East Portico of the Capitol and carried nationwide by radio, ran to about 1,900 words. Roosevelt opens by promising candor and asserting that the nation will revive, then gives the line for which the speech is remembered: the only thing we have to fear is fear itself, a nameless, unreasoning terror that paralyzes the effort to turn retreat into advance. He lists the material damage plainly, values shrunk, savings gone, farmers without markets, and insists that the trouble is no failure of substance; there is no plague of locusts. The fault lies with the rulers of exchange, the money changers who have fled from their high seats in the temple of our civilization. The middle of the speech turns from diagnosis to remedy. Happiness lies in achievement, not possession; public office must not be prized for profit; and above all the nation asks for action, and action now. Roosevelt sketches the lines of attack: direct government employment, help for agriculture, relief from foreclosure, reduced government cost, oversight of banking, an end to speculation with other people's money, and a sound currency. Abroad he pledges the policy of the good neighbor. The close shifts to the image of a trained and loyal army. Roosevelt hopes the normal balance of executive and legislative power will suffice, but warns that if Congress fails to act he will ask for broad executive power to wage a war against the emergency. He ends by asking the blessing of God. Within days he declared a national bank holiday and called Congress into the special session that became known as the Hundred Days.

Plot or Argument

• Candor and fear itself (Paragraph 1)

  Roosevelt promises to speak the whole truth, affirms that the nation will endure and revive, and names fear, nameless and unreasoning, as the one enemy that paralyzes recovery.

• The diagnosis: no failure of substance (Paragraphs 2-6)

  He catalogues the collapse of values, trade, savings, and employment, but insists that nature's bounty remains. The failure belongs to the rulers of exchange, whose outworn methods have collapsed, and the money changers must be driven from the temple of civilization.

• True values (Paragraphs 7-8)

  Happiness lies in the joy of achievement and creative work, not in money; public office must not be valued for pride or profit; and confidence can live only on honesty, honor, and faithful obligation.

• Action now: the lines of attack (Paragraphs 9-16)

  The greatest task is to put people to work, by direct government recruiting and public projects, aided by farm relief, mortgage relief, economy in government, national planning of utilities, and strict supervision of banking and credit. Domestic recovery comes first, and abroad the nation will be a good neighbor.

• Discipline, the Constitution, and emergency power (Paragraphs 17-23)

  Roosevelt asks the people to move like a trained and loyal army, praises the Constitution's flexibility, and warns that if Congress does not act he will ask for broad executive power equal to that granted in time of invasion.

• Pledge and prayer (Paragraphs 24-26)

  He speaks of national unity and old moral values, declares that the people have given a mandate for direct, vigorous action, and closes by asking God's blessing and guidance.

Lessons

• Naming the real enemy

  Roosevelt's most famous sentence identifies fear itself as the danger: a panic that stops people from spending, lending, and working and so deepens the very collapse it dreads. A leader's first task in a crisis, the speech suggests, is to tell the truth about conditions while refusing to let terror govern the response.

  • How can fear make an economic crisis worse? Think of what a bank run is.
  • Why does Roosevelt describe the fear as nameless, unreasoning, and unjustified?
  • Can a speech by itself restore confidence, or must action follow at once?

• Wealth and its proper place

  The address argues that the Depression exposed a false standard of success. Happiness lies in achievement and creative effort; public office is a trust, not a source of profit; and confidence depends on honesty and honor. Roosevelt frames economic reform as the recovery of older moral truths.

  • What does Roosevelt mean by restoring the temple to the ancient truths?
  • Why does he say these dark days will be worth all they cost if they teach a certain lesson?
  • Is it fair to blame a crisis chiefly on the money changers? What might they have answered?

• Emergency and constitutional limits

  Roosevelt praises the Constitution's flexibility and hopes the ordinary balance between Congress and the executive will be enough, but he warns that he may ask for war-like power over the emergency. The speech raises a perennial question: how far a free government may concentrate authority in a crisis without losing its essential form.

  • What two courses does Roosevelt expect Congress to take, and what will he ask for if it takes neither?
  • Why does he compare the Depression to a war and the people to an army?
  • What dangers come with granting a leader emergency powers, and what safeguards does the speech mention?

Context

Since the stock market crash of 1929 the American economy had shrunk by roughly a quarter, and thousands of banks had failed. The Twentieth Amendment, ratified in January 1933, would later move inaugurations to January, but Roosevelt still waited four months after his election to take office, and in February 1933 a renewed panic forced bank closures across the country while Herbert Hoover and the president-elect could not agree on joint action. On inauguration morning, banks in most states were shut or restricted. Abroad, Hitler had become chancellor of Germany five weeks earlier.

Composition

Roosevelt's adviser Raymond Moley prepared drafts from Roosevelt's instructions, and Roosevelt rewrote the text in his own hand at Hyde Park; Louis Howe is generally credited with adding the line about fear, which does not appear in Moley's typescript. The thought has older precedents, including Montaigne's essay on fear. The stored Avalon text is the printed version, which omits the brief opening Roosevelt spoke on the day, and it contains the misprint stem performance of duty where the familiar text reads stern.

Reception

The crowd responded most loudly not to the line about fear but to the warning about broad executive power. By common accounts, nearly half a million letters reached the White House in Roosevelt's first week in office. Roosevelt proclaimed a national bank holiday on 6 March, Congress passed the Emergency Banking Act on 9 March, and the special session that followed enacted much of the early New Deal. The fear sentence became one of the most quoted lines in American political speech.

Comparisons

• lincoln-second-inaugural-address

  Both inaugurals face a national ordeal and lean on Scripture, but Lincoln ventures no prediction and submits the outcome to God's purposes, while Roosevelt promises bold action and asks God to guide it.

• pearl-harbor-address

  Roosevelt's two most famous speeches bracket his presidency's two crises; the war metaphor he used against the Depression in 1933 became literal in December 1941.

• kennedy-inaugural-address

  Kennedy's 1961 inaugural shares Roosevelt's confidence and call to sacrifice, but its subject is the Cold War abroad, where Roosevelt kept foreign policy secondary to recovery at home.

• washington-farewell-address-and-selected-letters

  Washington's Farewell praises the Constitution and warns against usurped power; Roosevelt's address tests the same framework by contemplating emergency authority within it.

Quotes

For Students

A reading companion for classical Christian high school students. See the student guide.

Reading Guide

Watch for

• The opening promise to speak the whole truth, immediately followed by the reassurance that the nation will revive.
• The plain list of losses in Paragraph 2, set beside the claim in Paragraph 4 that there is no failure of substance.
• The biblical imagery of Paragraphs 4-7: locusts, money changers in the temple, people perishing without vision.
• The repeated It can be helped in Paragraph 11, closing with it can never be helped merely by talking about it.
• The army metaphor in Paragraphs 17-18 and the warning about broad executive power in Paragraph 22.

Key terms and names

Bank run

A rush of depositors to withdraw their money for fear a bank will fail; the runs of February 1933 are the fear Roosevelt's famous sentence addresses.

Money changers

Roosevelt's name, borrowed from the Gospels, for the bankers and financiers he blames for the collapse.

Foreclosure

The seizure of a mortgaged home or farm when the owner cannot pay; Roosevelt promises to prevent the growing loss of small homes and farms.

Good neighbor

Roosevelt's phrase for a foreign policy of mutual respect and kept agreements, later applied especially to Latin America.

Special session

A meeting of Congress called outside its regular schedule; Roosevelt promises to bring detailed measures before one at once.

Executive power

The authority of the president; Roosevelt warns he may ask for powers as broad as those given in wartime.

Seminar Questions

1. Comprehension What material losses does Roosevelt list in Paragraph 2, and what does he say is not the cause of the nation's distress?
2. Comprehension What specific lines of attack does Roosevelt propose, and which does he call the greatest primary task?
3. Interpretation Why does Roosevelt place the sentence about fear itself at the very beginning, before any proposal?
4. Interpretation How do the images of the money changers and the temple shape the listener's view of the bankers and of reform?
5. Interpretation What does Roosevelt gain and what does he risk by describing the people as a trained and loyal army?
6. Big Question Is it ever right for a free people to give a leader war-like powers in peacetime, and if so under what limits?
7. Big Question Roosevelt says happiness lies in achievement and creative effort. Is he right, and what would a Christian add to his account of happiness?

Faith Connections

• Matthew 21:12-13 (Scripture)

  Jesus overturns the tables of the money changers and calls the Temple a house of prayer. Roosevelt borrows the scene to cast financial reform as cleansing and restoration.

• Proverbs 29:18 (Scripture)

  Where there is no vision, the people perish. Roosevelt applies the proverb to leaders who knew only the rules of self-seekers.

• Mark 10:45 (Scripture)

  The Son of man came not to be ministered unto but to minister. Roosevelt echoes the words in hoping the Depression will teach Americans to minister to their fellow men.

• Montaigne, Essays I.18, Of Fear (Great Conversation)

  Montaigne writes that the thing he fears most is fear itself, since it can overpower judgment more than any other passion. Roosevelt's sentence turns the same observation into a public diagnosis.

Logic and Rhetoric

Central argument: The nation's resources are intact, so the crisis is a failure of those who managed exchange and of the fear that paralyzes recovery; restoring confidence requires honest values and immediate action to put people to work and regulate banking; the people have demanded such action; therefore the new president will lead it, through Congress if possible and with emergency power if necessary.

Rhetorical device: Anaphora. In Paragraph 11 Roosevelt opens sentence after sentence with It can be helped, then breaks the pattern: it can never be helped merely by talking about it.

Debate: Resolved: Roosevelt was right to warn that he would seek war-like executive power if Congress failed to act.

Memory Work

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.

Happiness lies not in the mere possession of money; it lies in the joy of achievement, in the thrill of creative effort.

Writing Prompts

Essay: Roosevelt calls the crisis no failure of substance and blames fear and the money changers. Analyze how the address combines moral diagnosis, practical program, and appeals to unity, and judge which element does the most persuasive work.

Comparison with Second Inaugural Address: Compare how Lincoln in 1865 and Roosevelt in 1933 speak about God's role in a national crisis. What does each ask of God, and what does each ask of the people?

Medical Lens

The famous sentence describes collective panic in nearly clinical terms: a nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror that paralyzes needed effort. Read beside the bank runs of February 1933, it is a description of contagious anxiety and avoidance at the scale of a whole economy, and it is often cited in discussions of fear and behavior. Roosevelt's own paralysis after the illness of 1921 was diagnosed as poliomyelitis; some later writers have proposed Guillain-Barre syndrome instead, a retrospective reading that remains debated. The speech itself does not refer to his illness.

• Paragraph 1

  Fear itself described as nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror that paralyzes the effort to convert retreat into advance.

  Neurosis Anxiety

Creative Prompts

• Classroom

  Divide the class into the groups Roosevelt addresses or blames: unemployed workers, farmers, small depositors, bankers, and members of Congress. Each group writes a one-paragraph reaction to the speech as heard on the radio on 4 March 1933.

• Essay

  Trace Roosevelt's biblical images (the plague of locusts, the money changers in the temple, the people perishing without vision, ministering rather than being ministered unto) and explain how they turn an economic program into a moral appeal.

• Fiction

  Write a short story set on the morning of 4 March 1933 in a small town whose bank has just closed its doors, ending as the family gathers around the radio for the inaugural.

Further Reading

• Freedom from Fear: The American People in Depression and War, 1929-1945, David M. Kennedy

  Pulitzer Prize-winning history of the Depression and the war years, with a full account of the banking crisis and the inauguration.

• The Defining Moment: FDR's Hundred Days and the Triumph of Hope, Jonathan Alter

  A narrative of the interregnum, the inaugural, and the first months of the New Deal.

• Nothing to Fear: FDR's Inner Circle and the Hundred Days That Created Modern America, Adam Cohen

• After Seven Years, Raymond Moley

  Memoir by the adviser who drafted the address with Roosevelt and later broke with him.