Taken from the Quarantine Speech (October 5, 1937) given by the U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, the quote “Let no one imagine that America will escape, that America may expect mercy.” is part of a greater paragraph. Roosevelt said in his speech: “If those things come to pass in other parts of the world, let no one imagine that America will escape, that America may expect mercy, that this Western Hemisphere will not be attacked and that it will continue tranquilly and peacefully to carry on the ethics and the arts of civilization.”. Here, what Roosevelt talks about is the possible loss of hundreds of creations and achievements of humans due to war or conflicts between nations. In the quote “Let no one imagine that America will escape, that America may expect mercy.”, Roosevelt argues that if human beings start suffering the consequences of such conflicts between nations (“[…] the small, the delicate, the defenseless—all will be lost or wrecked or utterly destroyed.”), America will not be able to avoid them or to expect mercy. It will be impossible to turn a blind eye to that situation and carry on with our daily routines (art and ethics). The inference that can be made is that America will face those problems sooner or later and yet no one will show mercy. This may be encouraged by the idea presented by Roosevelt on this speech about a more aggressive viewpoint.