“The only thing we have to fear is fear itself”

“The only thing we have to fear is fear itself” is the concluding phrase of a line from Franklin D. Roosevelt’s 1933 inaugural address. At his East Room memorial service, it returned as a carefully chosen reminder of courage amid national mourning.

At the Memorial Service

At Eleanor Roosevelt’s request, the East Room service included no eulogies. After two hymns and the final prayer, Bishop Angus Dun read Roosevelt’s famous line: “Let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself….” The phrase was therefore not offered as a new address, but recalled from an earlier presidential moment within the ceremony honoring Roosevelt.

Rhetorical Force

The line turns fear into its own object: rather than naming an outside danger, it warns against fear itself. Read at a service held while the capital and nation mourned, the remembered words carried a call for steadiness into a scene of loss. The account identifies the line’s selection as Eleanor Roosevelt’s wish, making its place in the service deliberate.