THE FOUR FREEDOMS
delivered by Franklin Delano Roosevelt, on January 6, 1941
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.
...
In the future days which we seek to make secure, we look
forward to a world founded upon four essential human
freedoms.
The first is freedom of speech and expression --everywhere
in the world.
The second is freedom of every person to worship God in his
own way-- everywhere in the world.
The third is freedom from want, which, translated into world
terms, means economic understandings which will secure to
every nation a healthy peacetime life for its inhabitants
--everywhere in the world.
The fourth is freedom from fear, which, translated into
world terms, means a world-wide reduction of armaments to
such a point and in such a thorough fashion that no nation
will be in a position to commit an act of physical
aggression against any neighbor --anywhere in the world.
That is no vision of a distant millennium. It is a definite
basis for a kind of world attainable in our own time and
generation. That kind of world is the very antithesis of
the so-called "new order" of tyranny which the dictators
seek to create with the crash of a bomb.
To that new order we oppose the greater conception --the
moral order. A good society is able to face schemes of
world domination and foreign revolutions alike without fear.
Since the beginning of our American history we have been
engaged in change, in a perpetual, peaceful revolution, a
revolution which goes on steadily, quietly, adjusting itself
to changing conditions without the concentration camp or the
quicklime in the ditch. The world order which we seek is
the cooperation of free countries, working together in a
friendly, civilized society.
This nation has placed its destiny in the hands, heads and
hearts of its millions of free men and women, and its faith
in freedom under the guidance of God. Freedom means the
supremacy of human rights everywhere. Our support goes to
those who struggle to gain those rights and keep them. Our
strength is our unity of purpose.
To that high concept there can be no end save victory.
Fifty years later, GWB made his famous speech to Congress,
the nation and the world, following the attacks of September 11.