Nothing To Fear Except Fear Itself

Who Said, ‘We Have Nothing to Fear Except Fear Itself’?

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In this week’s Dispatches from The Secret Library, Dr Oliver Tearle examines the origins of a famous phrase

‘We have nothing to fear except fear itself.’ Those words – and the sentiment they convey – are inextricably bound up with Franklin D. Roosevelt. But what are the origins of the phrase ‘nothing to fear but fear itself’? Did Roosevelt originate it?

Let’s start with FDR. Certainly, at his 1933 Presidential Inauguration, Franklin D. Roosevelt did express such a sentiment:

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