US Presidency
1943

I say this now to this 78th Congress, because it is wholly possible that freedom from want, the right of employment, the right of assurance against life's hazards, will loom very large as a task of America during the coming two years. I trust it will not be regarded as an issue, but rather as a task for all of us to study sympathetically, to work out with a constant regard for the attainment of the objective, with fairness to all and with injustice to none. In this war of survival we must keep before our minds not only the evil things we fight against but the good things we are fighting for. We fight to retain a great past, and we fight to gain a greater future. Let us remember, too, that economic safety for the America of the future is threatened unless a greater economic stability comes to the rest of the world. We can not make America an island in either a military or an economic sense.