Respectfully Quoted: A Dictionary of Quotations. 1989.
NUMBER:
750
AUTHOR:
Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1882–1945)
QUOTATION:
History proves that dictatorships do not grow out of strong and successful governments, but out of weak and helpless ones. If by democratic methods people get a government strong enough to protect them from fear and starvation, their democracy succeeds; but if they do not, they grow impatient. Therefore, the only sure bulwark of continuing liberty is a government strong enough to protect the interests of the people, and a people strong enough and well enough informed to maintain its sovereign control over its government.
ATTRIBUTION:
President FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT, fireside chat on economic conditions, April 14, 1938.—The Public Papers and Addresses of Franklin D. Roosevelt, 1938, pp. 242–43 (1941).
