Inaugural Address Quotes

The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.

Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country.

If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich. [Inaugural Address, January 20 1961]

We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory will swell when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.

Bad men need nothing more to compass their ends, than that good men should look on and do nothing.

Let us never negotiate out of fear. But let us never fear to negotiate. [Inaugural Address, January 20 1961]

If there be any among us who would wish to dissolve this Union, or to change its republican form, let them stand undisturbed as monuments of the safety with which error of opinion may be tolerated, where reason is left free to combat it." [First Inaugural Address, March 4, 1801]

With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.

Since every country stands in numerous and various relations with the other countries of the world, and many, our own among the number, exercise actual authority over some of these, a knowledge of the established rules of international morality is essential to the duty of every nation, and therefore of every person in it who helps to make up the nation, and whose voice and feeling form a part of what is called public opinion. Let not any one pacify his conscience by the delusion that he can do no harm if he takes no part, and forms no opinion. Bad men need nothing more to compass their ends, than that good men should look on and do nothing. He is not a good man who, without a protest, allows wrong to be committed in his name, and with the means which he helps to supply, because he will not trouble himself to use his mind on the subject. It depends on the habit of attending to and looking into public transactions, and on the degree of information and solid judgment respecting them that exists in the community, whether the conduct of the nation as a nation, both within itself and towards others, shall be selfish, corrupt, and tyrannical, or rational and enlightened, just and noble.

Let the word go forth from this time and place, to friend and foe alike, that the torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans, born in this century, tempered by war, disciplined by a hard and bitter peace, proud of our ancient heritage, and unwilling to witness or permit the slow undoing of those human rights to which this nation has always been committed, and to which we are committed today at home and around the world. Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty.

In a much quoted passage in his inaugural address, President Kennedy said, "Ask not what your country can do for you -- ask what you can do for your country." It is a striking sign of the temper of our times that the controversy about this passage centered on its origin and not on its content. Neither half of the statement expresses a relation between the citizen and his government that is worthy of the ideals of free men in a free society. The paternalistic "what your country can do for you" implies that government is the patron, the citizen the ward, a view that is at odds with the free man's belief in his own responsibility for his own destiny. The organismic, "what you can do for your country" implies that government is the master or the deity, the citizen, the servant or the votary. To the free man, the country is the collection of individuals who compose it, not something over and above them. He is proud of a common heritage and loyal to common traditions. But he regards government as a means, an instrumentality, neither a grantor of favors and gifts, nor a master or god to be blindly worshiped and served. He recognizes no national goal except as it is the consensus of the goals that the citizens severally serve. He recognizes no national purpose except as it is the consensus of the purposes for which the citizens severally strive.

But every difference of opinion is not a difference of principle.

…but let us judge not that we be not judged.

...We are all Federalists,and we are all Republicans.

With a good conscience our only sure reward, with history the final judge of our deeds, let us go forth to lead the land we love, asking His blessing and His help, but knowing that here on earth God's work must truly be our own.

We cannot help but believe that the old hatreds shall someday pass; that the lines of tribe shall soon dissolve; that as the world grows smaller, our common humanity shall reveal itself...

The famous passage from her book is often erroneously attributed to the inaugural address of Nelson Mandela. About the misattribution Williamson said, "Several years ago, this paragraph from A Return to Love began popping up everywhere, attributed to Nelson Mandela's 1994 inaugural address. As honored as I would be had President Mandela quoted my words, indeed he did not. I have no idea where that story came from, but I am gratified that the paragraph has come to mean so much to so many people.

At this second appearing to take the oath of the Presidential office there is less occasion for an extended address than there was at the first. Then a statement somewhat in detail of a course to be pursued seemed fitting and proper. Now, at the expiration of four years, during which public declarations have been constantly called forth on every point and phase of the great contest which still absorbs the attention and engrosses the energies of the nation, little that is new could be presented. The progress of our arms, upon which all else chiefly depends, is as well known to the public as to myself, and it is, I trust, reasonably satisfactory and encouraging to all. With high hope for the future, no prediction in regard to it is ventured. On the occasion corresponding to this four years ago all thoughts were anxiously directed to an impending civil war. All dreaded it, all sought to avert it. While the inaugural address was being delivered from this place, devoted altogether to saving the Union without war, insurgent agents were in the city seeking to destroy it without war--seeking to dissolve the Union and divide effects by negotiation. Both parties deprecated war, but one of them would make war rather than let the nation survive, and the other would accept war rather than let it perish, and the war came. One-eighth of the whole population were colored slaves, not distributed generally over the Union, but localized in the southern part of it. These slaves constituted a peculiar and powerful interest. All knew that this interest was somehow the cause of the war. To strengthen, perpetuate, and extend this interest was the object for which the insurgents would rend the Union even by war, while the Government claimed no right to do more than to restrict the territorial enlargement of it. Neither party expected for the war the magnitude or the duration which it has already attained. Neither anticipated that the cause of the conflict might cease with or even before the conflict itself should cease. Each looked for an easier triumph, and a result less fundamental and astounding. Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God's assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men's faces, but let us judge not, that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered. That of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes. "Woe unto the world because of offenses; for it must needs be that offenses come, but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh." If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of those offenses which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued through His appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both North and South this terrible war as the woe due to those by whom the offense came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a living God always ascribe to Him? Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said "the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether." With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.

There will be no legacy for Mr. Bush. I don't believe his successor would re-enunciate the words he used in his second inaugural address because they were too ambitious. So therefore I think his legacy is indecipherable.

               The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little. —Franklin D. Roosevelt, second inaugural address, 1937

We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.

I am naturally anti-slavery. If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong.

We Have Nothing To Fear But Fear Itself

One of my favorite lines from an inaugural address is this—I wonder if you remember who said it? “How can we love our country and not love our countrymen? And loving them, reach out a hand when they fall, heal them when they’re sick, and provide opportunities to make them self-sufficient so they will be equal in fact and not just in theory.” It was said by Ronald Reagan.

Now the trumpet summons us again—not as a call to bear arms, though arms we need; not as a call to battle, though embattled we are—but a call to bear the burden of a long twilight struggle, year in and year out, "rejoicing in hope, patient in tribulation"—a struggle against the common enemies of man: tyranny, poverty, disease, and war itself. Inaugural Adress, January 20, 1961

It is time for us to realize that we are too great a nation to limit ourselves to small dreams,” he preaches in his inaugural address. “We’re not, as some would have us believe, doomed to inevitable decline. I do not believe in a fate that will fall on us no matter what we do. “I believe in a fate that will fall on us if we do nothing.” *

I take as my guide the hope of a saint: in crucial things, unity- in important things, diversity- in all things, generosity.

Roosevelt returned to this theme in his fourth inaugural address in 1945: We have learned the simple truth, as Emerson said, that “The only way to have a friend is to be one.” We can gain no lasting peace if we approach it with suspicion and mistrust or with fear.

At the supreme moment of victory they cheered their Father Abraham, the man who, after a shaky start in office, learned how to command armies, grew in vision and eloquence, brought down slavery, and who, just six weeks ago, had given the most graceful and emotionally stunning inaugural address in the history of the American presidency.

the words have been spoken during rising tides of prosperity and the still waters of peace. Yet every so often, the oath is taken amidst gathering clouds and raging storms...

5 decades since JFK’s inaugural address it is time now to ask, what your country can do for you & not what you can do for your country. You, my friend have done enough!

Why should there not be a patient confidence in the ultimate justice of the people? Is there any better or equal hope in the world? —Abraham Lincoln, First Inaugural Address

John F. Kennedy deployed a chiasmus during his inaugural address—“Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country”—and thousands joined the Peace Corps.

We went down into the dungeons where the captives were held. There was a church above one of the dungeons -- which tells you something about saying one thing and doing another. (Applause.) I was -- we walked through the "Door Of No Return." I was reminded of all the pain and all the hardships, all the injustices and all the indignities on the voyage from slavery to freedom.

Auch wenn zwei Staaten in Deutschland existieren, sind sie doch füreinander nicht Ausland; ihre Beziehungen zueinander können nur von besonderer Art sein." ("Even though two states in Germany exist, they are not foreign countries to each other—their relations with each other can only be of a special kind.") First Inaugural Address as West German Chancellor, October 28, 1969

Let me then remind you that justice is an immutable, natural principle; and not anything that can be made, unmade, or altered by any human power. It is also a subject of science, and is to be learned, like mathematics, or any other science. It does not derive its authority from the commands, will, pleasure, or discretion of any possible combination of men, whether calling themselves a government, or by any other name. It is also, at all times, and in all places, the supreme law. And being everywhere and always the supreme law, it is necessarily everywhere and always the only law.

I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so.

Trump’s first inaugural address, for example, was darker than such addresses typically are (he spoke, for example, of “American carnage”), leading former President George W. Bush to observe: “That was some weird shit.

While attending to the customary tasks of assembling a cabinet, rewarding political loyalists with federal appointments, and drafting an inaugural address alone—he employed no speechwriters—Lincoln was uniquely forced to confront the collapse of the country itself, with no power to prevent its disintegration. Bound to loyalty to the Republican party platform on which he had run and won, he could yield little to the majority that had in fact voted against him.

Wir wollen ein Volk der guten Nachbarn sein und werden, im Innern und nach außen.“ ("We as a people want to be and become good neighbors, both domestically and abroad.") First Inaugural Address as West German Chancellor, October 28, 1969

A whirlwind of energy, Madison would seem omnipresent in the early days of Washington’s administration. He drafted not only the inaugural address but also the official response by Congress and then Washington’s response to Congress, completing the circle.

When President Reagan began his inaugural address, I was inspired by his optimism and determination to move the country forward. As he said in his speech, “Americans have the capacity now, as we’ve had in the past, to do whatever needs to be done to preserve this last and greatest bastion of freedom.

After taking his oath, Washington would give his first inaugural address. What would he say? What message would he need his countrymen to understand? Considering the eight-year war we have just finished analyzing we would assume he would fall back on the national covenant. He would not forget who or what had brought him to this point. 'It would be peculiarly improper,' the new president declared, 'to omit in this first official Act, my fervent supplications to that Almighty Being who rules over the Universe, who presides in the Councils of Nations, and whose providential aids can supply every human defect, that his benediction may consecrate to the liberties and happiness of the people of the United States.' He then got to the core of his message, invoking the covenant relationship with God in no uncertain terms: 'We ought to be no less persuaded that the propitious smiles of Heaven, can never be expected on a nation that disregards the eternal rules of order and right, which Heaven itself has ordained.' (Quoted from "Washington's Inaugural Address of 1780.")

I do not believe in a fate that will fall on us no matter what we do. I do believe in a fate that will fall on us if we do nothing.

Is our world gone? We say "Farewell." Is a new world coming? We welcome it, and we will bend it to the hopes of man.

How incredible it is that in this fragile existence, we should hate and destroy one another.

We will extend our arms to you[world] if you unclench your fists.

...with towards none and charity for all...

...with malice towards none and charity for all...

The question we ask today is not whether our government is too big or too small, but whether it works

Ask not what your Joe Montaperto can do for you - but rather - what you can do for your Joe Montaperto.

Progress does not compel us to settle centuries-old debates about the role of government for all time — but it does require us to act in our time,

If there's one word to describe Atlantic City, it's Big Business. Or two words--Big Business.

The rights of man come not from the generosity of the state but from the hand of God

And the whole power of the government must be limited to the maintenance of that single principle. And that one principle is justice. There is no other principle that any man can rightfully enforce upon others, or ought to consent to have enforced against himself. Every man claims the protection of this principle for himself, whether he is willing to accord it to others, or not. Yet such is the inconsistency of human nature, that some men—in fact, many men—who will risk their lives for this principle, when their own liberty or property is at stake, will violate it in the most flagrant manner, if they can thereby obtain arbitrary power over the persons or property of others. We have seen this fact illustrated in this country, through its whole history—especially during the last hundred years—and in the case of many of the most conspicuous persons. And their example and influence have been employed to pervert the whole character of the government. It is against such men, that all others, who desire nothing but justice for themselves, and are willing to unite to secure it for all others, must combine, if we are ever to have justice established for any.

A majority held in restraint by constitutional checks and limitations, and always changing easily with deliberate changes of popular opinions and sentiments, is the only true sovereign of a free people.

The Declaration of Independence, Abraham Lincoln's Second Inaugural Address, and Martin Luther King's 'Letter from the Birmingham Jail' all have their metaphysical roots in the biblical concept of the imago dei ((i.e. humans bearing the image of God). If pro-lifers are irrational for grounding basic human rights in the concept of a transcendent Creator, these important historical documents--all of which advanced our national understanding of equality--are irrational as well.

Frederick Douglass, so recently hopeful, was unhappy. The speech was “little better than our worst fears,” Douglass remarked. That the president continued to express respect for slavery where it existed was crushing; by pledging to enforce the Fugitive Slave Acts, Douglass said, Lincoln had portrayed himself as “an excellent slave hound.” Douglass had been considering immigrating to Haiti, and he saw nothing in Lincoln’s inaugural address to change his mind—in fact, quite the opposite.

Fondly do we hope—fervently do we pray—that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue, until all the wealth piled by the bond-man's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash, shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said 'the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.' [Excerpt from Abraham Lincoln’s 701-word second inaugural address, delivered at the United States Capitol on March 4, 1865.]

Mostly, matters of any consequence are three-sided, or four-sided, or polygonal; and the trotting around a polygon is severe work for people in any way stiff in their opinions. For myself, I am never satisfied that I have handled a subject properly till I have contradicted myself at least three times.

If A were to go to B, a merchant, and say to him, "Sir, I am a night-watchman, and I insist upon your employing me as such in protecting your property against burglars; and to enable me to do so more effectually, I insist upon your letting me tie your own hands and feet, so that you cannot interfere with me; and also upon your delivering up to me all your keys to your store, your safe, and to all your valuables; and that you authorize me to act solely and fully according to my own will, pleasure, and discretion in the matter; and I demand still further, that you shall give me an absolute guaranty that you will not hold me to any accountability whatever for anything I may do, or for anything that may happen to your goods while they are under my protection; and unless you comply with this proposal, I will now kill you on the spot,"—if A were to say all this to B, B would naturally conclude that A himself was the most impudent and dangerous burglar that he (B) had to fear; and that if he (B) wished to secure his property against burglars, his best way would be to kill A in the first place, and then take his chances against all such other burglars as might come afterwards. Our government constantly acts the part that is here supposed to be acted by A. And it is just as impudent a scoundrel as A is here supposed to be. It insists that every man shall give up all his rights unreservedly into its custody, and then hold it wholly irresponsible for any disposal it may make of them. And it gives him no alternative but death.

[T]he candid citizen must confess that if the policy of the Government upon vital questions affecting the whole people is to be irrevocably fixed by decisions of the Supreme Court, the instant they are made in ordinary litigation between parties in personal actions the people will have ceased to be their own rulers, having to that extent practically re-signed their Government into the hands of that eminent tribunal.

Extend the sphere," Madison wrote, and, "you take in a greater variety of parties and interests," and you make it difficult for either a mob majority or a tyrannical minority to unite "to invade the rights of other citizens." Whatever one's take on any of the debates of the day (especially the debate over slavery), and whatever one's philosophical understanding of the relationship of republicanism to land, commerce, finance, and labor, most agreed on practicalities. Also wanted to remove Spain from the Mississippi; also wanted the capacities to pacify hostile native Americans and put down rebellions of poor people; and all wanted Great Britain to get out of the way of their commerce. All wanted "room enough," as Thomas Jefferson would put it in his 1800 inaugural address, to be protected from Europe's "exterminating havoc." Expansion became the answer to every question, the solution to all problems, especially those two caused by expansion.

When the result of the lawsuit was made known (and rumour flew much quicker than the telegraph which has supplanted it), the whole town was filled with rejoicings. [Horses were put into carriages for the sole purpose of being taken out. Empty barouches and landaus were trundled up and down the High Street incessantly. Addresses were read from the Bull. Replies were made from the Stag. The town was illuminated. Gold caskets were securely sealed in glass cases. Coins were well and duly laid under stones. Hospitals were founded. Rat and Sparrow clubs were inaugurated. Turkish women by the dozen were burnt in effigy in the market place, together with scores of peasant boys with the label ‘I am a base Pretender’, lolling from their mouths. The Queen’s cream-coloured ponies were soon seen trotting up the avenue with a command to Orlando to dine and sleep at the Castle, that very same night. Her table, as on a previous occasion, was snowed under with invitations from the Countess of R., Lady Q., Lady Palmerston, the Marchioness of P., Mrs. W.E. Gladstone, and others, beseeching the pleasure of her company, reminding her of ancient alliances between their family and her own, etc.] — all of which is properly enclosed in square brackets, as above, for the good reason that a parenthesis it was without any importance in Orlando’s life. She skipped it, to get on with the text

When the result of the lawsuit was made known (and rumour flew much quicker than the telegraph which has supplanted it), the whole town was filled with rejoicings. [Horses were put into carriages for the sole purpose of being taken out. Empty barouches and landaus were trundled up and down the High Street incessantly. Addresses were read from the Bull. Replies were made from the Stag. The town was illuminated. Gold caskets were securely sealed in glass cases. Coins were well and duly laid under stones. Hospitals were founded. Rat and Sparrow clubs were inaugurated. Turkish women by the dozen were burnt in effigy in the market place, together with scores of peasant boys with the label ‘I am a base Pretender’, lolling from their mouths. The Queen’s cream-coloured ponies were soon seen trotting up the avenue with a command to Orlando to dine and sleep at the Castle, that very same night. Her table, as on a previous occasion, was snowed under with invitations from the Countess of R., Lady Q., Lady Palmerston, the Marchioness of P., Mrs. W.E. Gladstone, and others, beseeching the pleasure of her company, reminding her of ancient alliances between their family and her own, etc.] — all of which is properly enclosed in square brackets, as above, for the good reason that a parenthesis it was without any importance in Orlando’s life. She skipped it, to get on with the text.

When the result of the lawsuit was made known (and rumour flew much quicker than the telegraph which has supplanted it), the whole town was filled with rejoicings. [Horses were put into carriages for the sole purpose of being taken out. Empty barouches and landaus were trundled up and down the High Street incessantly. Addresses were read from the Bull. Replies were made from the Stag. The town was illuminated. Gold caskets were securely sealed in glass cases. Coins were well and duly laid under stones. Hospitals were founded. Rat and Sparrow clubs were inaugurated. Turkish women by the dozen were burnt in effigy in the market place, together with scores of peasant boys with the label ‘I am a base Pretender’, lolling from their mouths. The Queen’s cream-coloured ponies were soon seen trotting up the avenue with a command to Orlando to dine and sleep at the Castle, that very same night. Her table, as on a previous occasion, was snowed under with invitations from the Countess of R., Lady Q., Lady Palmerston, the Marchioness of P., Mrs. W.E. Gladstone, and others, beseeching the pleasure of her company, reminding her of ancient alliances between their family and her own, etc.] — all of which is properly enclosed in square brackets, as above, for the good reason that a parenthesis it was without any importance in Orlando’s life. She skipped it, to get on with the text.

When Oppenheimer took the floor and began speaking in his soft voice, everyone listened in absolute silence. Wilson recalled that Oppenheimer “dominated” the discussion. His main argument essentially drew on Niels Bohr’s vision of “openness.” The war, he argued, should not end without the world knowing about this primordial new weapon. The worst outcome would be if the gadget remained a military secret. If that happened, then the next war would almost certainly be fought with atomic weapons. They had to forge ahead, he explained, to the point where the gadget could be tested. He pointed out that the new United Nations was scheduled to hold its inaugural meeting in April 1945—and that it was important that the delegates begin their deliberations on the postwar world with the knowledge that mankind had invented these weapons of mass destruction. “I thought that was a very good argument,” said Wilson. For some time now, Bohr and Oppenheimer himself had talked about how the gadget was going to change the world. The scientists knew that the gadget was going to force a redefinition of the whole notion of national sovereignty. They had faith in Franklin Roosevelt and believed that he was setting up the United Nations precisely to address this conundrum. As Wilson put it, “There would be areas in which there would be no sovereignty, the sovereignty would exist in the United Nations. It was to be the end of war as we knew it, and this was a promise that was made. That is why I could continue on that project.” Oppenheimer had prevailed, to no one’s surprise, by articulating the argument that the war could not end without the world knowing the terrible secret of Los Alamos. It was a defining moment for everyone. The logic— Bohr’s logic—was particularly compelling to Oppenheimer’s fellow scientists. But so too was the charismatic man who stood before them. As Wilson recalled that moment, “My feeling about Oppenheimer was, at that time, that this was a man who is angelic, true and honest and he could do no wrong. . . . I believed in him.

The Cooper Union Address, the Gettysburg Address, the House Divided Speech, the First Inaugural Address, and the Second Inaugural were all performed by Lincoln prior to and during his term in office. To this day, they are still hailed as oratorical masterpieces.

Let every nation know,” declared Kennedy in his inaugural address, “that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and the success of liberty.

The history of the American civil religion is a history of the conviction that the American people are God’s New Israel, his newly chosen people. The belief that America has been elected by God for a special destiny in the world has been the focus of American sacred ceremonies, the inaugural addresses of our presidents, the sacred scriptures of the civil religion. It has been so pervasive a motif in the national life that the word ‘belief’ does not really capture the dynamic role that it has played for the American people, for it passed into the ‘realm of motivational myths’“ (Cherry, 129).

... scientific method is not the same as the scientific spirit. The scientific spirit does not rest content with applying that which is already known, but is a restless spirit, ever pressing forward towards the regions of the unknown, ... it acts as a check, as well as a stimulus, sifting the value of the evidence, and rejecting that which is worthless, and restraining too eager flights of the imagination and too hasty conclusions.[7] —Archibald Garrod, Archibald Garrod, "The Scientific Spirit in Medicine: Inaugural Sessional Address to the Abernethian Society", St. Bartholomew's Hospital Journal, 20, 19 (1912)

Marx’s forceful intellect and strength of personality soon made him a dominant figure in the association. He wrote its inaugural address and drew up its statutes.

irritatingly moralistic. Democratic globalism sees as the engine of history not the will to power but the will to freedom. And while it has been attacked as a dreamy, idealistic innovation, its inspiration comes from the Truman Doctrine of 1947, the Kennedy inaugural of 1961, and Reagan’s “evil empire” speech of 1983. They all sought to recast a struggle for power between two geopolitical titans into a struggle between freedom and unfreedom, and yes, good and evil. Which is why the Truman Doctrine was heavily criticized by realists like Hans Morgenthau and George Kennan—and Reagan was vilified by the entire foreign policy establishment for the sin of ideologizing the Cold War by injecting a moral overlay. That was then. Today, post-9/11, we find ourselves in a similar existential struggle but with a different enemy: not Soviet communism, but Arab-Islamic totalitarianism, both secular and religious. Bush and Blair are similarly attacked for naïvely and crudely casting this struggle as one of freedom versus unfreedom, good versus evil. Now, given the way not just freedom but human decency were suppressed in both Afghanistan and Iraq, the two major battles of this new war, you would have to give Bush and Blair’s moral claims the decided advantage of being obviously true. Nonetheless, something can be true and still be dangerous. Many people are deeply uneasy with the Bush-Blair doctrine—many conservatives in particular. When Blair declares in his address to Congress: “The spread of freedom is … our last line of defense and our first line of attack,” they see a dangerously expansive, aggressively utopian foreign policy. In short, they see Woodrow Wilson. Now, to a conservative, Woodrow Wilson is fightin’ words. Yes, this vision is expansive and perhaps utopian. But it ain’t Wilsonian. Wilson envisioned the spread of democratic values through as-yet-to-be invented international institutions. He could be forgiven for that. In 1918, there was no way to know how utterly corrupt and useless those international institutions would turn out to be. Eight decades of bitter experience later—with Libya chairing the UN Commission on Human Rights—there is no way not to know. Democratic globalism is not Wilsonian. Its attractiveness is precisely that it shares realism’s insights about the centrality of power. Its attractiveness is precisely that it has appropriate contempt for the fictional legalisms of liberal internationalism. Moreover, democratic globalism is an improvement over realism. What it can teach realism is that the spread of democracy is not just an end but a means, an indispensable means for securing American interests. The reason is simple. Democracies are inherently more friendly to the United States, less belligerent to their neighbors and generally more inclined to peace. Realists are right that to protect your interests you often have to go around the world bashing bad guys over the head. But that technique, no matter how satisfying, has its limits. At some point, you have to implant something, something organic and self-developing. And that something is democracy. But where? V. DEMOCRATIC REALISM The danger of democratic globalism is its universalism, its open-ended commitment to human freedom, its temptation to plant the flag of democracy everywhere. It must learn to say no. And indeed, it does say no. But when it says no to Liberia, or Congo, or Burma, or countenances alliances with authoritarian rulers in places like Pakistan

President Lincoln had suggested in his second inaugural address. Referring to the American South, Lincoln said on March 4, 1865: “With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation’s wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow, and orphan—to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves, and with all nations.

The rights of man come not from the generosity of the state but from the hand of God. John F. Kennedy, Inaugural Address, 20 January 1961

I believe that the many administration officials, lawmakers, and regulatory policymakers—and their staffs—who poured a year and a half of prodigious work into the legislation had been guided, knowingly or not, by a simultaneously high-minded and pragmatic sentiment that Woodrow Wilson voiced before he launched the effort that would establish the Federal Reserve System. “We shall deal with our economic system as it is and as it may be modified, not as it might be if we had a clean sheet of paper to write upon; and step by step we shall make it what it should be,” Wilson said in his first inaugural address. Wilson’s words continued to make good sense a century later.

Sometimes it is said that man cannot be trusted with the government of himself. Can he, then, be trusted with the government of others? Or have we found angels in the forms of kings to govern him? Let history answer this question." -- Thomas Jefferson, First Inaugural Address.

We all know the Lincoln of the Second Inaugural and the Gettysburg Address. We need to know the Lincoln of the Address before the Wisconsin State Agricultural Society and of the Lecture on Discoveries and Inventions, both talks in which he vents his favorite enthusiasms. We need to understand his thirst for economic and industrial development. We need to realize that he was a lawyer for corporations, a vigorous advocate of property rights, and a defender of an “elitist” economics against the unreflective populist bromides of his age. We need to focus on his love for the Founders as guides to the American future. We need to grapple with his ferocious ambition, personal and political.

To counter apathy, most change agents focus on presenting an inspiring vision of the future. This is an important message to convey, but it’s not the type of communication that should come first. If you want people to take risks, you need first to show what’s wrong with the present. To drive people out of their comfort zones, you have to cultivate dissatisfaction, frustration, or anger at the current state of affairs, making it a guaranteed loss. “The greatest communicators of all time,” says communication expert Nancy Duarte—who has spent her career studying the shape of superb presentations—start by establishing “what is: here’s the status quo.” Then, they “compare that to what could be,” making “that gap as big as possible.” We can see this sequence in two of the most revered speeches in American history. In his famous inaugural address, President Franklin D. Roosevelt opened by acknowledging the current state of affairs. Promising to “speak the whole truth, frankly and boldly,” he described the dire straits of the Great Depression, only then turning to what could be, unveiling his hope of creating new jobs and forecasting, “This great nation . . . will revive and will prosper. . . . The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” When we recall Martin Luther King, Jr.’s, epic speech, what stands out is a shining image of a brighter future. Yet in his 16-minute oration, it wasn’t until the eleventh minute that he first mentioned his dream. Before delivering hope for change, King stressed the unacceptable conditions of the status quo. In his introduction, he pronounced that, despite the promise of the Emancipation Proclamation, “one hundred years later, the life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination.” Having established urgency through depicting the suffering that was, King turned to what could be: “But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt.” He devoted more than two thirds of the speech to these one-two punches, alternating between what was and what could be by expressing indignation at the present and hope about the future. According to sociologist Patricia Wasielewski, “King articulates the crowd’s feelings of anger at existing inequities,” strengthening their “resolve that the situation must be changed.” The audience was only prepared to be moved by his dream of tomorrow after he had exposed the nightmare of today.

President Eisenhower liked scientists. Their culture and their mode of thinking, their ability to be nonideological and rational, appealed to him. “Love of liberty means the guarding of every resource that makes freedom possible—from the sanctity of our families and the wealth of our soil to the genius of our scientists,” he had proclaimed in his first inaugural address. He threw White House dinners for scientists, the way that the Kennedys would do for artists, and gathered many around him in advisory roles. Sputnik

The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little. —FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT, Second Inaugural Address, January 20, 1937

Together with Aristotle, he created a civic tradition founded on the heroic image of the orator, who inspires his countrymen by a combination of eloquence, rational argument, and moral vision, and by doing so rallies his nation in a time of crisis. From Washington’s farewell speech to Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address and Kennedy’s inaugural, Cicero and Aristotle would inspire a vital part of American political culture.

For myself and for our Nation, I want to thank my predecessor for all he has done to heal our land.

He read of Lincoln's second inaugural address and of the broad peace Lincoln hoped to gain, and, a page later, he read of the bullet that had slain Lincoln on Good Friday evening in 1865. He clicked his tongue between his teeth at the thought of a President dying at an assassin's hands. Then, all at once, he shivered as if suddenly seized by an ague. He had seen Lincoln in Louisville that Good Friday, had listened to him plead without avail for Kentucky to stay in the Union, had even spoken with him. He shivered again. In defeat in the world he knew, Lincoln had wanted to martyr himself for the United States. In the other world, where there was no need for it, he had been made a martyr in the hour of his greatest triumph.

IN A MUCH QUOTED PASSAGE in his inaugural address, President Kennedy said, “Ask not what your country can do for you—ask what you can do for your country.” It is a striking sign of the temper of our times that the controversy about this passage centered on its origin and not on its content. Neither half of the statement expresses a relation between the citizen and his government that is worthy of the ideals of free men in a free society. The paternalistic “what your country can do for you” implies that government is the patron, the citizen the ward, a view that is at odds with the free man’s belief in his own responsibility for his own destiny. The organismic, “what you can do for your country” implies that government is the master or the deity, the citizen, the servant or the votary. To the free man, the country is the collection of individuals who compose it, not something over and above them. He is proud of a common heritage and loyal to common traditions. But he regards government as a means, an instrumentality, neither a grantor of favors and gifts, nor a master or god to be blindly worshipped and served. He recognizes no national goal except as it is the consensus of the goals that the citizens severally serve. He recognizes no national purpose except as it is the consensus of the purposes for which the citizens severally strive. The free man will ask neither what his country can do for him nor what he can do for his country. He will ask rather “What can I and my compatriots do through government” to help us discharge our individual responsibilities, to achieve our several goals and purposes, and above all, to protect our freedom? And he will accompany this question with another: How can we keep the government we create from becoming a Frankenstein that will destroy the very freedom we establish it to protect? Freedom is

I see one-third of a nation ill-housed, ill-clad, ill-nourished,” declared FDR in his 1937 inaugural address, reminding the Court and the United States: “The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little.”92 Emboldened by the scale of his electoral victory, the President then opened the second administration by announcing a one-third cut in relief spending and his promise to balance the budget.

It was a celebratory time in the North as people sensed the war would soon end, but many knew that the country would face a monumental challenge in reuniting when the fighting was finally over. Lincoln certainly knew and was already trying to prepare the nation. On March 4, 1865, he gave his second inaugural address at the Capitol to forty thousand onlookers. Rather than giving a victory speech or admonishing the South for its role in starting the war, Lincoln encouraged reconciliation. In the short time he spoke, just six or seven minutes, he named the institution of slavery as the cause of the war and described slavery as a national debt created by the “bondsmen’s 250 years of unrequited toil.

Even in the south where he had once been hated and feared as an abolitionist and union general, there was suprising pride in Garfield's presidency. Although he had made it clear from the moment he took office, even in his inaugural address that he would not tolerate the discrimination he knew was taking place in the south, what he promised was not judgement and vengeance, but help. The root of the problem he believed was ignorance. And it was the responsibility, indeed the high privilege and sacred duty of the entire nation, north and south to educate its people. Garfield's plan was to give the south as rapidly as possible, the blessings of general education and business enterprise, and trust to time in these courses. The south had taken him at his word and for the first time in decades had accepted the president of the north as its president as well. With Garfield in the White House, The New York Times wrote, the south had felt as they had not felt before for years, that the government was their government and the chief magistrate of the country had an equal claim upon the loyal affection of the whole people. Although each of these disparate groups trusted Garfield, it was not until they were plunged into a common grief and fear that they began to trust one another. Suddenly, the contemporaries of Garfield wrote, the nation was - united, as if by magic. Even Jefferson Davis, the former president of the confederacy, and a man whom Garfield had voted to indite as a war criminal, admitted that the assassination attempt had made the whole nation kin.

Constant revolutionising of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitation distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones. All fixed, fast-frozen relations, with their train of ancient and venerable prejudices and opinions, are swept away, all new-formed ones become antiquated before they can ossify. All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses his real conditions of life, and his relations with his kind.

Will you hazard so desperate a step while there is any possibility that any portion of the ills you fly from have no real existence? Will you, while the certain ills you fly to are greater than all the real ones you fly from—will you risk the commission of so fearful a mistake?

In the classic comedy movie The Producers by Mel Brooks, there is a scene where dozens of glitter-clad Nazis sing a joyous song called “Springtime for Hitler.” At the end of the song, the opening night audience, adorned in black tie and gala dresses, are stunned into a deafening silence with mouths literally stuck open. That was the effect of Trump’s speech. His followers loved it. When their senses came back to them, it was the consensus of the Washington punditocracy that this was the darkest inaugural speech given in American history. It would simply be referred to as the “American carnage” speech. Republican Michael Green told Foreign Policy magazine: “Where friends and allies around the world look to new presidents’ inaugural addresses in hopes of seeing Aragorn, they heard from Trump only Gollum.”9 Former president George W. Bush was overheard to mutter, “That was some weird shit.

apparent. To counter apathy, most change agents focus on presenting an inspiring vision of the future. This is an important message to convey, but it’s not the type of communication that should come first. If you want people to take risks, you need first to show what’s wrong with the present. To drive people out of their comfort zones, you have to cultivate dissatisfaction, frustration, or anger at the current state of affairs, making it a guaranteed loss. “The greatest communicators of all time,” says communication expert Nancy Duarte—who has spent her career studying the shape of superb presentations—start by establishing “what is: here’s the status quo.” Then, they “compare that to what could be,” making “that gap as big as possible.” We can see this sequence in two of the most revered speeches in American history. In his famous inaugural address, President Franklin D. Roosevelt opened by acknowledging the current state of affairs. Promising to “speak the whole truth, frankly and boldly,” he described the dire straits of the Great Depression, only then turning to what could be, unveiling his hope of creating new jobs and forecasting, “This great nation . . . will revive and will prosper. . . . The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” When we recall Martin Luther King, Jr.’s, epic speech, what stands out is a shining image

In his second inaugural address, Lincoln said that slavery was the chief cause of the war and noted the complicity of Christians, many of whom “believed weighty political issues could be parsed into good or evil. Lincoln’s words offered a complexity that many found difficult to accept.”The war devastated the playground of evangelical politics and “‘thrashed the certitude of evangelical Protestantism’ as much as World War I shattered European Protestant liberalism.” Lincoln’s contention that Christians played a role in causing the war offers an illuminating and devastating critique of the way toxic religious attitudes stoke fires of hatred. His realism in confronting facts was both masterful and badly needed. Lincoln spoke of “‘American slavery’ as a single offense ascribed to the whole nation.

It is interesting that Lincoln, who was for the most part a skeptic in terms of religion and certainly not a Christian in any sense of orthodoxy, was also knowledgeable enough about Christian theology that he included it in this, his second inaugural address. His remarks were remarkable in their understanding of the faith and doctrines of Christians, Southern and Northern, and they are immensely important for us today in understanding just how much religious beliefs— be they Christian, Jewish, or Muslim— still influence political and foreign policy decisions. Lincoln’s decision to proclaim emancipation with a military order that could not be countermanded by a hostile Supreme Court was masterful. His understanding of the way the deeply embedded beliefs of Christians in the South and the North brought about the war were among the most insightful words spoken about the war made by anyone before or after. The Emancipation Proclamation and the Lieber Code were and remain revolutionary. They both regard the importance of justice as the most important part of law and freedom. To paraphrase a civil rights leader, without justice, there can be no peace.

inaugural address, which Trump took as another occasion to denounce “the establishment” in characteristically Bannonesque tones. An assemblage of one-line clichés, it saw the billionaire declaring that his rise to the presidency represented no mere trade-off between parties but rather a transfer of power “from Washington, D.C.” to “you, the American people.” He also declared, in a shout-out to the 1930s, that “the forgotten men and women of our country will be forgotten no longer” and described the landscape of deindustrialization as “rusted-out factories scattered like tombstones across the landscape of our nation.

Intelligence, patriotism, Christianity, and a firm reliance on Him who has never yet forsaken this favored land are still competent to adjust in the best way all our present difficulty.” —Abraham Lincoln, first Inaugural Address, March 4,

From the day of our founding, we have proclaimed that every man and woman on this earth has rights, and dignity, and matchless value because they bear the image of the Maker of heaven and earth. Across the generations we have proclaimed the imperative of self-government, because no one is fit to be a master, and no one deserves to be a slave.

America will not pretend that jailed dissidents prefer their chains, or that women welcome humiliation and servitude.

From the perspective of a single day, including this day of dedication, the issues and questions before our country are many. From the viewpoint of centuries, the questions that come to us are narrowed and few. Did our generation advance the cause of freedom? And did our character bring credit to that cause?

The grandest of these ideals is an unfolding American promise that everyone belongs, that everyone deserves a chance, that no insignificant person was ever born.