Franklin D. Roosevelt - Only Thing we Have to Fear

Franklin Roosevelt took the oath on Saturday, March 4, 1933, with roughly a quarter of American workers unemployed and thousands of banks already failed. He opened with the sentence on this wall, "the only thing we have to fear is fear itself," and then named what he meant: "nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance."

The speech was only the start. He closed the banks for a holiday two days later, and on Sunday, March 12, he spoke to the country by radio, explaining in plain words what had been done and why the banks would reopen. It was the first of his fireside chats. The banks began opening the next morning.

Here he sits at a desk with a standing microphone at his elbow, hands resting on a sheet of paper, the flag draped behind him. A lamp glows amber at the left, and at the right the dark sky is split by a fork of lightning. The quote sits in cream serif at the bottom, with his name in capitals beneath.