AP Success - AP US History: Franklin Roosevelt's First Inaugural Address

So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself—the nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance…

Values have shrunken to fantastic levels;...the withered leaves of industrial enterprise lie on every side; farmers find no markets for their produce; the savings of many years in thousands of families are gone. More important, a host of unemployed citizens face the grim problem of existence...

Yet our distress comes from no failure of substance. We are stricken by no plague of locusts. Compared with the perils which our forefathers conquered, because they believed and were not afraid, we have still much to be thankful for. Nature still offers her bounty and human efforts have multiplied it. Plenty is at our doorstep, but a generous use of it languishes in the very sight of the supply…

Our greatest primary task is to put people to work…It can be accomplished in part by direct recruiting by the Government itself, treating the task as we would treat the emergency of a war, but at the same time, through this employment, accomplishing greatly needed projects to stimulate and reorganize the use of our natural resources.