Greatest Recorded Speeches in American History (1933-2008)

[FDR]: 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 us to convert retreat into advance. Yesterday, December 7, 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. A

short time ago an American airplane dropped one bomb on Hiroshima and

destroyed its usefulness to the enemy. That bomb has more power than 20,000

tons of TNT. The Japanese began the war from the air at Pearl Harbor,

they have been repaid many-fold. And the end is not yet.

With this bomb, we have now added a new and revolutionary increase in

destruction to supplement the growing power of our armed forces. We have been

compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions.

In the council's of government, we must guard against the acquisition of

unwarranted influence—whether sought or unsought—by the military-industrial

complex.

The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.

We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or

democratic process.

I do not believe that any of us would exchange places with any other people or

any other generation. The energy, the faith, the devotion

which we bring to this endeavor will light our country and all who serve it.

And the glow from that fire can truly light the world. And so my fellow

Americans ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your

country.

My fellow citizens of the world,

ask not what America will do for you, but what together we can do for the freedom

of man. And there are even a few who say

that it's true that communism is an evil system, but it permits us to make

economic progress.

Lasst sie nach Berlin kommen—let them come to Berlin. [Cheering]

All free men—wherever they may live—are citizens of Berlin

and therefore, as a free man, I take pride in the words ich bin ein Berliner.

I have a dream, that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be

judged by the color about skin, but by the content in their character. I have

a dream today.

Let freedom ring and when it happens,

we allow freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet,

from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all

of God's children—black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and

Catholics—will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro

spiritual, "free at last, free at last,

thank God Almighty, we are free at last."

There is no constitutional issue here.

The command of the Constitution is plain. There is no moral issue.

It is wrong,

deadly wrong, to deny any of your fellow Americans the right to vote in this country.