Four Freedoms

¹In the future days, which we seek to make secure, we look forward to a world founded upon four essential human freedoms.

²The first is freedom of speech and expression — everywhere in the world.

³The second is freedom of every person to worship God in his own way — everywhere in the world.

⁴The 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.

⁵The 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.

⁶That is no vision of a distant millennium. It is a definite basis for a kind of world attainable in our own time and generation.

⁷That 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.

⁸To 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.

⁹Since 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 quick-lime in the ditch.

¹⁰The world order which we seek is the cooperation of free countries, working together in a friendly, civilized society.

¹¹Freedom means the supremacy of human rights everywhere. Our support goes to those who struggle to gain those rights or keep them. Our strength is our unity of purpose.

¹²To that high concept there can be no end save victory.