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.
