“The only thing we have to fear is fear itself” was said by Franklin D. Roosevelt in his first inaugural address on March 4, 1933, as he spoke to Americans during the Great Depression.

Quick Scoop

  • The famous quote comes from Roosevelt’s first inaugural speech, where he was trying to calm a nation gripped by bank failures, unemployment, and economic panic.
  • In the fuller line, he said that fear was a “nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.”
  • Earlier thinkers like Michel de Montaigne, Francis Bacon, and Henry David Thoreau had expressed similar ideas about fearing fear itself, but Roosevelt’s version is the one that became globally iconic.

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