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.

Reported by Representative Martin Dies as having been said in a conversation at the White House, in the Congressional Record (September 22, 1950), vol. 96, Appendix, p. A6832. Reported as "exceedingly dubious" in Paul F. Boller, Jr., Quotemanship: The Use and Abuse of Quotations for Polemical and Other Purposes, chapter 8, p. 361 (1967); Boller goes on to say that "it is most unlikely that FDR would have said anything like it, even flippantly, to the zealous HUAC chairman, though he may have told Dies that he was exaggerating the size of the American communist movement".