Here are a few memorable lines from presidential inaugural addresses.
- “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.” -Thomas Jefferson, First Inaugural Address, March 4, 1801
- “Possessing as we do all the raw materials, the fruit of our own soil and industry, we ought not to depend in the degree we have done on supplies from other countries.” –James Monroe, First Inaugural Address, March 4, 1817
- “As American freemen we can not but sympathize in all efforts to extend the blessings of civil and political liberty, but at the same time we are warned by the admonitions of history and the voice of our own beloved Washington to abstain from entangling alliances with foreign nations.” –Zachary Taylor, Inaugural Address, March 5, 1849
- “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…” –Abraham Lincoln, Second Inaugural Address, March 4, 1865
- “The fact that two great political parties have in this way settled a dispute in regard to which good men differ as to the facts and the law no less than as to the proper course to be pursued in solving the question in controversy is an occasion for general rejoicing.” –Rutherford B. Hayes, Inaugural Address, March 5, 1877
- “We wish peace, but we wish the peace of justice, the peace of righteousness. We wish it because we think it is right and not because we are afraid. No weak nation that acts manfully and justly should fear us, and no strong power should ever be able to single us out as a subject for insolent aggression.” –Theodore Roosevelt, Inaugural Address, March 4, 1905
- “We have been, and propose to be, more and more American. We believe that we can best serve our own country and most successfully discharge our obligations to humanity by continuing to be openly and candidly, intensely and scrupulously, American. If we have any heritage, it has been that. If we have any destiny, we have found it in that direction.” -Calvin Coolidge, Inaugural Address, March 4, 1925
- “History does not long entrust the care of freedom to the weak or the timid.” –Dwight D. Eisenhower, First Inaugural Address, January 20, 1953
- “We dare not tempt them with weakness. For only when our arms are sufficient beyond doubt can we be certain beyond doubt that they will never be employed.” –John F. Kennedy, Inaugural Address, January 20, 1961
- “The essence of freedom is that each of us shares in the shaping of his own destiny.” -Richard Nixon, First Inaugural Address, January 20, 1969
- “Above all, we must realize that no arsenal, or no weapon in the arsenals of the world, is so formidable as the will and moral courage of free men and women. It is a weapon our adversaries do not have. It is a weapon that we as Americans do have. Let that be understood by those who practice terrorism and prey upon their neighbors.” –Ronald Reagan, First Inaugural Address, January 20, 1981
