The Four Freedoms

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 worldwide 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 aggression¹ against any neighbor -- anywhere in the world.

 

That is no vision of a distant millennium². It is a definite basis for a kind of world attainable³ in our own time and generation. That kind of world is the very antithesis⁴ of the so-called "new order" of tyranny which the dictators seek to create with the crash of a bomb.

 

To 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.

 

Since the beginning of our American history we have been engaged in change, in a perpetual, peaceful revolution, a revolution which goes on steadily⁵, quietly, adjusting itself to changing conditions without the concentration camp or the quicklime in the ditch. The world order which we seek is the cooperation of free countries, working together in a friendly, civilized⁶ society.

 

This nation has placed its destiny in the hands, heads and hearts of its millions of free men and women, and its faith in freedom under the guidance of God. Freedom means the supremacy⁷ of human rights everywhere. Our support goes to those who struggle to gain those rights and keep them. Our strength is our unity⁸ of purpose.

 

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

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