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A quick Yahoo! search on "we have nothing to fear but fear itself" led to quite a few sites that credited Franklin D. Roosevelt with this quote. Apparently, he uttered these famous words during one of his inaugural speeches. So we headed over to Yahoo!'s Franklin D. Roosevelt category for more details. The Franklin D. Roosevelt Library and Museum linked to Bartleby.com, which offered us the complete texts of the inaugural addresses of all the U.S. presidents.
We found FDR's first inaugural address, which contains the full quote in the fifth sentence: 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. Looking at the date of the speech, 1933, and reading a bit further into Roosevelt's address, we realized that he was referring to the economic conditions of the time -- in other words, The Great Depression. He was essentially saying, "if we can't shake our pessimistic economic
outlook, it will be tough to turn things around." President Roosevelt was calling for a little irrational exuberance...
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