MinnLawyer Blog

In the spirit of the day, here are a couple of great presidential Inaugural Address moments:

“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

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“[F]irst of all let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear … is fear itself … nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance. …

“Values have shrunken to fantastic levels: taxes have risen, our ability to pay has fallen, government of all kinds is faced by serious curtailment of income, the means of exchange are frozen in the currents of trade, the withered leaves of industrial enterprise lie on every side, farmers find no markets for their produce, the savings of many years in thousands of families are gone. … Primarily, this is because the rulers of the exchange of mankind’s goods have failed through their own stubbornness and their own incompetence, have admitted their failures and abdicated. Practices of the unscrupulous money changers stand indicted in the court of public opinion, rejected by the hearts and minds of men. …

“I shall ask the Congress for the one remaining instrument to meet the crisis. . .broad executive power to wage a war against the emergency as great as the power that would be given to me if we were in fact invaded by a foreign foe.”

– FDR, First Inaugural Address, March 4, 1933

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“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. …

“And so, my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you-ask what you can do for your country.”

– JFK, Inaugural Address, Jan. 20, 1961