United States Presidents' Inaugural Speeches: From Washington to George W. Bush
United States Presidents' Inaugural Speeches: From Washington to George W. Bush
This is the raw material of American power. Forty-three speeches, delivered from 1789 to 2001, capturing the precise moments when new presidents stood before the nation and defined what they believed America could be. From Washington's trembling invocation of divine guidance to Lincoln's devastating meditation on mercy and war, from FDR's defiant declaration that there is nothing to fear but fear itself to Kennedy's luminous challenge to ask not what your country can do for you, these addresses constitute the closest thing American democracy has to sacred text. Here you hear the voice of a nation talking to itself across centuries, each president reaching backward to the founders and forward to posterity. The collection includes the famous and the forgotten, the soaring and the stilted, but each one a window into how American leaders have understood their office and their moment. Reading them in sequence reveals not just the evolution of political rhetoric but the persistence of the same anxieties about liberty, unity, and purpose that have haunted the republic since its founding. This is primary source material at its most vivid: the actual words spoken at the threshold of power, now available for anyone who wants to hear America thinking aloud.
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“But every difference of opinion is not a difference of principle.””
— United States. Presidents
“the government both in the executive and the legislative branches must carry out in good faith the platforms upon which the party was entrusted with power. But the government is that of the whole people; the party is the instrument through which policies are determined and men chosen to bring them into being. The animosities of elections should have no place in our Government, for government must concern itself alone with the common weal.””
— United States. Presidents
“Things in life will not always run smoothly. Sometimes we will be rising toward the heights”
— United States. Presidents
“This is preeminently the time to speak the truth, the whole truth, frankly and boldly. Nor need we shrink from honestly facing conditions in our country today. This great Nation will endure as it has endured, will revive and will prosper. So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself”
— United States. Presidents
“The chief duty of the National Government in connection with the currency of the country is to coin money and declare its value. Grave doubts have been entertained whether Congress is authorized by the Constitution to make any form of paper money legal tender. The present issue of United States notes has been sustained by the necessities of war; but such paper should depend for its value and currency upon its convenience in use and its prompt redemption in coin at the will of the holder, and not upon its compulsory circulation. These notes are not money, but promises to pay money.””
— United States. Presidents
“Harrison’s 8,400-word inaugural speech was the longest ever, while his 30-day Presidency was the shortest.””
— United States. Presidents
“How incredible it is that in this fragile existence, we should hate and destroy one another.””
— United States. Presidents
“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.””
— United States. Presidents
“In 1826, the 50th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, they both died. They died on the same day, within a few hours of each other, and that day was the Fourth of July.””
— United States. Presidents
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