I do not believe in communism any more than you do but there is nothing wrong with the Communists in this country; several of the best friends I have got are Communists
Not Franklin D. Roosevelt — reported only by Martin DiesMartin Dies Jr.1900–1972 · First chairman of the House committee investigating un-American activities
The exact wording appears only in Martin Dies’s own account of a White House conversation, “The Communist Threat to America,” printed in the Congressional Record Appendix for September 22, 1950 (p. A6832). No independent record shows Roosevelt said it, and Wikiquote lists it as misattributed. Wikiquote quotes the historian Paul F. Boller Jr. calling it “exceedingly dubious.”
“I do not believe in communism any more than you do but there is nothing wrong with the Communists in this country; several of the best friends I have got are Communists” attributed to Franklin D. Roosevelt by Martin Dies, "The Communist Threat to America," Congressional Record, vol. 96, Appendix, p. A6832 (September 22, 1950); uncorroborated and widely considered dubious.
⚠ The slide-ready mistake: crediting this to Franklin D. Roosevelt. Use the credit shown above instead.
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In context
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Provenance
Where the words actually appear
Work
“The Communist Threat to America” (By Martin Dies)
Published in
Congressional Record, vol. 96, Appendix, pp. A6831–A6832
Date
Friday, September 22, 1950 (extension of remarks of Rep. Harold H. Velde of Illinois)
Speaker of the line
Roosevelt, as reported by Dies; no other witness
The President was furious. I was surprised at his anger. He said to me—he called me Mr. Congressman—he had called me Martin before—he said, “Mr. Congressman, you must see a bugaboo under every bed.” I said, “No; I never look under the bed, Mr. President.” “Well,” he said, “I have never seen a man that had such exaggerated ideas about this thing. I do not believe in communism any more than you do but there is nothing wrong with the Communists in this country; several of the best friends I have got are Communists.” Mind you that is a truthful account. He made that statement.
Dies’s account
Transcribed from the GPO scan of the Congressional Record Appendix, p. A6832. Dashes are normalized and OCR errors in the scan are corrected. In the surrounding text Dies says he brought Roosevelt a list of alleged Communists on the government payroll. He gives no date for the meeting.
Wikiquote’s Roosevelt page lists the line under Misattributed. It cites Rep. Martin Dies in the Congressional Record (September 22, 1950), Appendix p. A6832, and Paul F. Boller Jr.’s verdict of “exceedingly dubious” (Wikiquote ↗).
We checked the bound Congressional Record scan ourselves. The exact wording is on p. A6832, inside “The Communist Threat to America (By Martin Dies),” which Rep. Harold H. Velde inserted on Friday, September 22, 1950 (govinfo scan ↗).
Dies retold his conversations with Roosevelt in his 1963 autobiography, The Martin Dies’ Story. Spartacus Educational’s summary of that book gives a November 1940 remark in different words: “I do not regard the Communists as any present or future threat to our country” (Spartacus Educational ↗).
Quote Investigator has no article on this line, so Wikiquote’s sourced entry is the main reference. The verdict comes from Boller’s Quotemanship (1967), as Wikiquote quotes it (catalog record ↗).
The wording first appeared in Martin Dies’s statement “The Communist Threat to America,” published in the Congressional Record Appendix on September 22, 1950. It is a 1931-or-later text by an identifiable private author. The Congressional Record is a government publication, but that does not clearly make inserted outside material public domain, so we treat Dies’s text as in copyright.
Rights status is our research, not legal advice — and copyright varies by country and edition. For commercial or published use, confirm with the rightsholder. See terms.
Fact-check
Why it’s pinned on FDR
The line circulates as a Roosevelt quotation, often as proof that he was soft on communism. But it rests entirely on one man’s memory, published after Roosevelt’s death.
✕
Popular creditFranklin D. Roosevelt Unsupported
No Roosevelt speech, letter, press conference or memo containing these words has been cited. The only source is Dies’s secondhand account. Wikiquote lists it under Misattributed and quotes Boller: “it is most unlikely that FDR would have said anything like it, even flippantly, to the zealous HUAC chairman” (Wikiquote ↗).
✓
Actual source of the wordingMartin Dies Jr. Single interested witness
Dies reported the words in his statement “The Communist Threat to America,” inserted into the Congressional Record by Rep. Harold H. Velde on September 22, 1950. Dies insisted “Mind you that is a truthful account” but gave no date for the conversation (Congressional Record, p. A6832 ↗).
✓The words are Martin Dies’s version of a private conversation, first printed in the Congressional Record Appendix, p. A6832, on September 22, 1950 (scan ↗). Nothing corroborates that Roosevelt said them, and Boller judged the report “exceedingly dubious” (Wikiquote ↗).
Context
Why it mattered
In 1950, at the height of the second Red Scare, Dies published a long statement on Communist infiltration of the federal government. Rep. Harold H. Velde had it printed in the Congressional Record, noting that the Public Printer put the cost of inserting it at $287. In it Dies recalls bringing Roosevelt a list of alleged Communists on the government payroll and says the President angrily brushed him off with this line.
Because it appeared in an official government publication, the anecdote was later quoted as if it were a documented presidential remark. It is really Dies’s own claim. Dies admits in the same passage that Roosevelt never had a chance to answer it: he writes that other things he published during Roosevelt’s lifetime went undenied, not this specific line.
“Mind you that is a truthful account. He made that statement.” — Martin Dies, 1950
Dies’s other accounts
Dies wrote in the same 1950 statement that he had published a book in 1940 and a series of articles in Liberty magazine that year. We have not found this line in either, and Dies does not say it was there.
His 1963 autobiography, as summarized by Spartacus Educational, describes a November 1940 conversation in which Roosevelt supposedly said he did not regard the Communists as “any present or future threat to our country.” That is a related claim in different words, and it also comes only from Dies (Spartacus Educational ↗).
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Filed under
More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.
1900–1972 · U.S. congressman & first chairman of the House committee investigating un-American activities
Martin Dies Jr. chaired the House committee investigating un-American activities, popularly called the Dies Committee and the forerunner of HUAC. He clashed with the Roosevelt administration over the committee’s anti-Communist investigations. He is the only source for this line, which he attributed to Roosevelt in a 1950 statement and called “a truthful account.”
For writers & researchers
Cite this
Earliest source we found (Dies’s account)
Martin Dies, “The Communist Threat to America,” extension of remarks of Hon. Harold H. Velde, Congressional Record, vol. 96, Appendix (September 22, 1950): A6831–A6832. Attribution to Roosevelt rests solely on Dies’s report; see Paul F. Boller Jr., Quotemanship (1967), ch. 8, p. 361, as quoted by Wikiquote.
This verification page
Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘I do not believe in communism any more than you do but there is nothing wrong with the Communists in this country; several of the best friends I have got are Communists’?” Last verified 2 Nov 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/i-do-not-believe-in-communism-any-more-than-you-do-but/