MyDeclaration
My name is Stewart Harris, and I declare that I can never hope to say anything about freedom as profound as what Franklin Delano Roosevelt said in his State of the Union Message of 1941:
“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 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.
That is no vision of a distant millennium. It is a definite basis for a kind of world attainable in
our own time and generation.”
We’re still working on it, Mr. President. But one day I firmly believe that these four freedoms will be secured – everywhere in the world.
— Stewart Harris, Virginia, Host of Your Weekly Constitutional, a weekly public radio show underwritten by the Robert H. Smith Center for the Constitution at James Madison’s Montpelier