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Respectfully Quoted: A Dictionary of Quotations. 1989.

 
NUMBER: 1984
AUTHOR: Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1882–1945)
QUOTATION: We have here a human as well as an economic problem. When humane considerations are concerned, Americans give them precedence. The lessons of history, confirmed by the evidence immediately before me, show conclusively that continued dependence upon relief induces a spiritual and moral disintegration fundamentally destructive to the national fibre. To dole out relief in this way is to administer a narcotic, a subtle destroyer of the human spirit.
ATTRIBUTION: President FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT, annual message to the Congress, January 4, 1935.—The Public Papers and Addresses of Franklin D. Roosevelt, 1935, p. 19 (1938).
SUBJECTS: Welfare