Senator
Dirksen, Mr. Chief Justice, Mr. Vice President, President
Johnson, Vice President Humphrey, my fellow Americans, and
my fellow citizens of the world community:
I
ask you to share with me today the majesty of this moment.
In the orderly transfer of power, we celebrate the unity
that keeps us free.
Each
moment in history is a fleeting time, precious and unique.
But some stand out as moments of beginning, in which
courses are set that shape decades or centuries.
This
can be such a moment.
Forces
now are converging that make possible, for the first time,
the hope that many of man's deepest aspirations can at
last be realized. The spiraling pace of change allows us
to contemplate, within our own lifetime, advances that
once would have taken centuries.
In
throwing wide the horizons of space, we have discovered
new horizons on earth.
For
the first time, because the people of the world want
peace, and the leaders of the world are afraid of war, the
times are on the side of peace.
Eight
years from now America will celebrate its 200th
anniversary as a nation. Within the lifetime of most
people now living, mankind will celebrate that great new
year which comes only once in a thousand years, the
beginning of the third millennium.
What
kind of nation we will be, what kind of world we will live
in, whether we shape the future in the image of our hopes,
is ours to determine by our actions and our choices.
The
greatest honor history can bestow is the title of
peacemaker. This honor now beckons America, the chance to
help lead the world at last out of the valley of turmoil,
and onto that high ground of peace that man has dreamed of
since the dawn of civilization.
If
we succeed, generations to come will say of us now living
that we mastered our moment, that we helped make the world
safe for mankind.
This
is our summons to greatness.
I
believe the American people are ready to answer this call.
The
second third of this century has been a time of proud
achievement. We have made enormous strides in science and
industry and agriculture. We have shared our wealth more
broadly than ever. We have learned at last to manage a
modern economy to assure its continued growth.
We
have given freedom new reach, and we have begun to make
its promise real for black as well as for white.
We
see the hope of tomorrow in the youth of today. I know
America's youth. I believe in them. We can be proud that
they are better educated, more committed, more
passionately driven by conscience than any generation in
our history.
No
people has ever been so close to the achievement of a just
and abundant society, or so possessed of the will to
achieve it. Because our strengths are so great, we can
afford to appraise our weaknesses with candor and to
approach them with hope.
Standing
in this same place a third of a century ago, Franklin
Delano Roosevelt addressed a Nation ravaged by depression
and gripped in fear. He could say in surveying the
Nation's troubles: "They concern, thank God, only
material things."
Our
crisis today is the reverse.
We
have found ourselves rich in goods, but ragged in spirit;
reaching with magnificent precision for the moon, but
falling into raucous discord on earth.
We
are caught in war, wanting peace. We are torn by division,
wanting unity. We see around us empty lives, wanting
fulfillment. We see tasks that need doing, waiting for
hands to do them.
To
a crisis of the spirit, we need an answer of the spirit.
To
find that answer, we need only look within ourselves.
When
we listen to "the better angels of our nature,"
we find that they celebrate the simple things, the basic
things, such as goodness, decency, love, kindness.
Greatness
comes in simple trappings.
The
simple things are the ones most needed today if we are to
surmount what divides us, and cement what unites us.
To
lower our voices would be a simple thing.
In
these difficult years, America has suffered from a fever
of words; from inflated rhetoric that promises more than
it can deliver; from angry rhetoric that fans discontents
into hatreds; from bombastic rhetoric that postures
instead of persuading.
We
cannot learn from one another until we stop shouting at
one another, until we speak quietly enough so that our
words can be heard as well as our voices.
For
its part, government will listen. We will strive to listen
in new ways, to the voices of quiet anguish, the voices
that speak without words, the voices of the heart, to the
injured voices, the anxious voices, the voices that have
despaired of being heard.
Those
who have been left out, we will try to bring in.
Those
left behind, we will help to catch up.
For
all of our people, we will set as our goal the decent
order that makes progress possible and our lives secure.
As
we reach toward our hopes, our task is to build on what
has gone before, not turning away from the old, but
turning toward the new.
In
this past third of a century, government has passed more
laws, spent more money, initiated more programs, than in
all our previous history.
In
pursuing our goals of full employment, better housing,
excellence in education; in rebuilding our cities and
improving our rural areas; in protecting our environment
and enhancing the quality of life, in all these and more,
we will and must press urgently forward.
We
shall plan now for the day when our wealth can be
transferred from the destruction of war abroad to the
urgent needs of our people at home.
The
American dream does not come to those who fall asleep.
But
we are approaching the limits of what government alone can
do.
Our
greatest need now is to reach beyond government, and to
enlist the legions of the concerned and the committed.
What
has to be done, has to be done by government and people
together or it will not be done at all. The lesson of past
agony is that without the people we can do nothing; with
the people we can do everything.
To
match the magnitude of our tasks, we need the energies of
our people, enlisted not only in grand enterprises, but
more importantly in those small, splendid efforts that
make headlines in the neighborhood newspaper instead of
the national journal.
With
these, we can build a great cathedral of the spirit, each
of us raising it one stone at a time, as he reaches out to
his neighbor, helping, caring, doing.
I
do not offer a life of uninspiring ease. I do not call for
a life of grim sacrifice. I ask you to join in a high
adventure, one as rich as humanity itself, and as exciting
as the times we live in.
The
essence of freedom is that each of us shares in the
shaping of his own destiny.
Until
he has been part of a cause larger than himself, no man is
truly whole.
The
way to fulfillment is in the use of our talents; we
achieve nobility in the spirit that inspires that use.
As
we measure what can be done, we shall promise only what we
know we can produce, but as we chart our goals we shall be
lifted by our dreams.
No
man can be fully free while his neighbor is not. To go
forward at all is to go forward together.
This
means black and white together, as one nation, not two.
The laws have caught up with our conscience. What remains
is to give life to what is in the law: to ensure at last
that as all are born equal in dignity before God, all are
born equal in dignity before man.
As
we learn to go forward together at home, let us also seek
to go forward together with all mankind.
Let
us take as our goal: where peace is unknown, make it
welcome; where peace is fragile, make it strong; where
peace is temporary, make it permanent.
After
a period of confrontation, we are entering an era of
negotiation.
Let
all nations know that during this administration our lines
of communication will be open.
We
seek an open world, open to ideas, open to the exchange of
goods and people, a world in which no people, great or
small, will live in angry isolation.
We
cannot expect to make everyone our friend, but we can try
to make no one our enemy.
Those
who would be our adversaries, we invite to a peaceful
competition, not in conquering territory or extending
dominion, but in enriching the life of man.
As
we explore the reaches of space, let us go to the new
worlds together, not as new worlds to be conquered, but as
a new adventure to be shared.
With
those who are willing to join, let us cooperate to reduce
the burden of arms, to strengthen the structure of peace,
to lift up the poor and the hungry.
But
to all those who would be tempted by weakness, let us
leave no doubt that we will be as strong as we need to be
for as long as we need to be.
Over
the past twenty years, since I first came to this Capital
as a freshman Congressman, I have visited most of the
nations of the world.
I
have come to know the leaders of the world, and the great
forces, the hatreds, the fears that divide the world.
I
know that peace does not come through wishing for it, that
there is no substitute for days and even years of patient
and prolonged diplomacy.
I
also know the people of the world.
I
have seen the hunger of a homeless child, the pain of a
man wounded in battle, the grief of a mother who has lost
her son. I know these have no ideology, no race.
I
know America. I know the heart of America is good.
I
speak from my own heart, and the heart of my country, the
deep concern we have for those who suffer, and those who
sorrow.
I
have taken an oath today in the presence of God and my
countrymen to uphold and defend the Constitution of the
United States. To that oath I now add this sacred
commitment: I shall consecrate my office, my energies, and
all the wisdom I can summon, to the cause of peace among
nations.
Let
this message be heard by strong and weak alike:
The
peace we seek to win is not victory over any other people,
but the peace that comes "with healing in its
wings"; with compassion for those who have suffered;
with understanding for those who have opposed us; with the
opportunity for all the peoples of this earth to choose
their own destiny.
Only
a few short weeks ago, we shared the glory of man's first
sight of the world as God sees it, as a single sphere
reflecting light in the darkness.
As
the Apollo astronauts flew over the moon's gray surface on
Christmas Eve, they spoke to us of the beauty of earth,
and in that voice so clear across the lunar distance, we
heard them invoke God's blessing on its goodness.
In
that moment, their view from the moon moved poet Archibald
MacLeish to write:
"To
see the earth as it truly is, small and blue and beautiful
in that eternal silence where it floats, is to see
ourselves as riders on the earth together, brothers on
that bright loveliness in the eternal cold, brothers who
know now they are truly brothers."
In
that moment of surpassing technological triumph, men
turned their thoughts toward home and humanity, seeing in
that far perspective that man's destiny on earth is not
divisible; telling us that however far we reach into the
cosmos, our destiny lies not in the stars but on Earth
itself, in our own hands, in our own hearts.
We
have endured a long night of the American spirit. But as
our eyes catch the dimness of the first rays of dawn, let
us not curse the remaining dark. Let us gather the light.
Our
destiny offers, not the cup of despair, but the chalice of
opportunity. So let us seize it, not in fear, but in
gladness, and, "riders on the earth together,"
let us go forward, firm in our faith, steadfast in our
purpose, cautious of the dangers; but sustained by our
confidence in the will of God and the promise of man.
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