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Respectfully Quoted: A Dictionary of Quotations. 1989.

 
NUMBER: 337
AUTHOR: Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1882–1945)
QUOTATION: I hope your committee will not permit doubts as to constitutionality, however reasonable, to block the suggested legislation.
ATTRIBUTION: President FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT, letter to Representative Samuel B. Hill, July 6, 1935.—The Public Papers and Addresses of Franklin D. Roosevelt, 1935, p. 298 (1938).

“NOTE: The last paragraph of the foregoing letter to Congressman Hill should, of course, be read as a whole. When it is, it will be seen that the paragraph merely sets forth the traditional rule which the Courts are supposed to follow in determining whether or not a statute is unconstitutional…. The letter to Congressman Hill was really an under-statement of this rule. During the past two years certain newspaper publishers and columnists have quoted only the last sentence of the letter, taken completely from its text, so as to give a wholly false impression of the letter. It is perhaps typical of methods now prevalent among certain newspaper owners and publishers” (p. 298). This note was written by FDR.
SUBJECTS: Constitution of the United States