from day to day this
is no ordinary time
have to rise above
I know and you know that any man who is in an office of great responsibility faces a heavier responsibility perhaps than any man has ever faced before in this country.
Therefore, to be a candidate of either great political party is a very serious and a very solemn thing. You cannot treat it as an ordinary nomination, in an ordinary time.
We people in the United States have got to realize today that we face now a grave, a serious situation.
Therefore, this year, the candidate who is the President of the United States cannot make a campaign in the usual sense of the word.
He must be on his job.
So each and every one of you who give him this responsibility, because you will make the campaign, you will have to rise above considerations which are narrow and partisan.
You must know that this is the time when all Good men and women give every bit of service and strength to their country that they have to give.
This is a time when it is the United States that we fight for.
The domestic policies that we have established as a party, that we must believe in, that we must carry forward, and in the world we have a position of great responsibility.
We cannot tell from day to day what may come.
This is no ordinary time.
No time for weighing anything, except what we can best do for the country as a whole. And that rests, that responsibility on each and every one of us as individuals.
No man who is a candidate, or who is president, can carry this situation alone.
This is only carried by a united people who love their country and who will live for it to the fullest of their ability with the highest ideals, with the determination that their party shall be absolutely devoted to the good of the nation as a whole and to doing what this country can to bring the world to a safer and happier condition.
(Eleanor Roosevelt Speech to the 1940 Democratic National Convention in Chicago
July 18, 1940)
TO repeat:
a united people
who love their country
and who will live for it
to the fullest of their ability
with the highest ideals,
with the determination that their party shall be absolutely devoted
to the good of the nation as a whole
and to doing what this country can
to bring the world
to a safer and happier condition
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