Four Freedoms (Norman Rockwell) - Roosevelt's Speech

Roosevelt's Speech

Throughout his political career Roosevelt championed the cause of human rights. In his Annual Message to Congress of January 6, 1941, which was delivered at a time when Nazi powers ruled over Western Europe, he asked the American citizens to support war efforts in various ways. He stated his vision of a better future, founded upon four freedoms: the "four essential human freedoms," some traditional and some new ones: freedom of speech, freedom of worship, freedom from want, and freedom from fear. Roosevelt's State of the Union Address delivered on January 6, 1941, became known as his "Four Freedoms Speech", due to its conclusion that described President's vision of worldwide extension of the American ideals of individual liberties summarized by these four freedoms. The speech served to awaken Congress and the nation to the dire war calling, articulate ideological aims of the necessary armed conflict and appeal to the universal American belief of freedom. The following passage is from Roosevelt's speech:

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. —Franklin D. Roosevelt