While serving as Governor of Georgia, Zell Miller delivered two speeches in Warm Springs honoring Roosevelt. Read extended text of those speeches here.

He also made frequent mention of Roosevelt in his other speeches.

In his first inaugural address on Jan. 1991, Gov. Miller  harkened back to the words of FDR to describe his (Miller's) intentions on improving Georgia's public schools:
 

"...In building a world-class school system, we will follow the advice of a part-time Georgian named Franklin D. Roosevelt, who once said, 'Try something. If it works, try more of it. If it doesn't work, try something else. But for God's sake, try something. ...'"   Miller, Zell, Listen to this Voice: Selected Speeches of Governor Zell Miller, (Mercer University Press, Macon, Georgia, 1998), p. 4

When revenue fell short in 1992, Gov. Miller again turned to the words of FDR, while making his budget address on Jan. 16, 1992:
 

"When Franklin D. Roosevelt was struck down by a cerebral hemorrhage in 1945, he was at the Little White House in Warm Springs, posing for a portrait while he jotted down notes for a speech he was to have made. A fragment from that unfinished speech reads, 'The only limit to our realization of tomorrow is our doubts of today.'  We've got uncertainties these days, with the national recession dragging on. And we are going to deal with those uncertainties in the supplemental budget. But we cannot allow our doubts of today to stand in the way of our realization of tomorrow. ..."   Miller, Zell, Listen to this Voice: Selected Speeches of Governor Zell Miller, (Mercer University Press, Macon, Georgia, 1998), p. 62

"...I was born during the worst of the Depression on a cold winter's day in the drafty bedroom of a rented house, and I was my parents' hope for the future. Franklin Roosevelt was elected that year, and would soon replace generations of neglect with a whirlwind of activity, bringing to our little valley a very welcome supply of God's most precious commodity: hope.

My father - a teacher - died when I was two weeks old, leaving a young widow with two small children. But with my mother's faith in God - and Mister Roosevelt's voice on the radio - we kept going. ...

My family would still be isolated and destitute if we had not had FDR's Democratic brand of government. I made it because Franklin Delano Roosevelt energized this nation. ..."   Miller, Zell, Listen to this Voice: Selected Speeches of Governor Zell Miller, (Mercer University Press, Macon, Georgia, 1998), p. 79.
 

"I was five years old when President Franklin Roosevelt stood on the steps of the capitol here in Washington, looked south and said, 'I see one-third of a nation ill-housed, ill-clad, and ill-nourished.'

I grew up in that South, a region shackled by segregation and plagued by ignorance. But that South is no more. To use a phrase coined in Georgia, it is 'gone with the wind.'

In fact, today, if you were to separate out the South - I'm not advocating that, we tried it once. But if you were to separate out that 'one-third of a nation,' its economy would rank as the fifth largest in the world, and by the year 2000, the South will surpass the Northeast in population. ..."   Miller, Zell, Listen to this Voice: Selected Speeches of Governor Zell Miller, (Mercer University Press, Macon, Georgia, 1998), p. 291.
 

"...I am a historian, and history is replete with examples of how the arts were preserved and encouraged during much more difficult times than the ones we face. During the Great Depression, Franklin Roosevelt found ways to employ artists in arts-related activities, just as he did others in building roads and dams. ..."   Miller, Zell, Listen to this Voice: Selected Speeches of Governor Zell Miller, (Mercer University Press, Macon, Georgia, 1998), p. 347.

"...The roots of this book go back to the 1930s, to the Depression and the Works Progress Administration, which was one of Franklin Roosevelt's alphabet soup of agencies designed to put Americans back to work and stimulate the economy. One of the WPA projects was to hire writers all across America to chronicle the geographic and cultural character of the states. The result here in Georgia was a publication called Georgia: A Guide to its Towns and Countryside, which was published by The University of Georgia in 1940. That initial Guide did more than feed a handful of hungry writers when times were tough. It has captured the imaginations of countless Georgians over the past fifty years, and this New Guide to Georgia recaptures and updates the spirit of that original effort. ..."   Miller, Zell, Listen to this Voice: Selected Speeches of Governor Zell Miller, (Mercer University Press, Macon, Georgia, 1998), pp. 552-553.
 

Go to FDR's Place in History Page

Go to FDR's Ties to Georgia Page

Go to Famous Georgians page

Go to Georgia History page

Go to GeorgiaInfo Home