ABSTRACT
Many will recognise the sentiment expressed by Franklin D. Roosevelt in his inaugural address in 1933: ‘Let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.’ Of the four freedoms he promised the American people when taking them to war some years later, freedom from fear was foremost. The President took his phrase from Thoreau, who said: ‘Nothing is as much to be feared as fear.’ The full quotation has even more merit than the one sentence that is so often quoted: ‘Let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself – nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyses needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.’1
