Presidential Inaugural Speeches

"I have spoken of a thousand points of light, of all the community organizations that are spread like stars throughout the Nation, doing good."

"My fellow Americans, our long national nightmare is over."

"The elevation of the negro race from slavery to the full rights of citizenship is the most important political change we have known since the adoption of the Constitution of 1787."

"He serves his party best who serves the country best."

"With the nation-wide induction of womanhood into our political life, we may count upon her intuitions, her refinements, her intelligence, and her influence to exalt the social order."

"There would be little traffic in illegal liquor if only criminals patronized it."

"Every difference of opinion is not a difference of principle. "

"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."

"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."

"We have cherished the policy of non-interference with affairs of foreign governments wisely inaugurated by Washington."

"For we, the people, understand that our country cannot succeed when a shrinking few do very well and a growing many barely make it."

"Much has been given us, and much will rightfully be expected from us."

"The tasks we face are difficult. We can accomplish them only if we work together."

"We have been proud of our industrial achievements, but we have not hitherto stopped thoughtfully enough to count the human cost, the cost of lives snuffed out, of energies overtaxed and broken, the fearful physical and spiritual cost to the men and women and children upon whom the dead weight and burden of it all has fallen pitilessly the years through."