LBJ's Inaugural Address
President Johnson had first taken the oath of office
on board Air Force One on November 22, 1963, the day President Kennedy was assassinated in
Dallas. The election of 1964 was a landslide victory for the Democratic Party. Mrs.
Johnson joined the President on the platform on the East Front of the Capitol; she was the
first wife to stand with her husband as he took the oath of office. The oath was
administered by Chief Justice Earl Warren. Leontyne Price sang at the ceremony.
INAUGURAL ADDRESS
WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 20, 1965
My fellow countrymen, on this occasion, the oath I
have taken before you and before God is not mine alone, but ours together. We are one
nation and one people. Our fate as a nation and our future as a people rest not upon one
citizen, but upon all citizens.
This is the majesty and the meaning of this moment.
For every generation, there is a destiny. For some, history decides. For this generation,
the choice must be
our own.
Even now, a rocket moves toward Mars. It reminds us that the world will not be the same
for our children, or even for ourselves in a short span of years. The next man to stand
here will look out on a scene different from our own, because ours is a time of
change--rapid and fantastic change bearing the secrets of nature, multiplying the nations,
placing in uncertain hands new weapons for mastery and destruction, shaking old values,
and uprooting old ways.
Our destiny in the midst of change will rest on the unchanged character of our people, and
on their faith.
THE AMERICAN COVENANT
They came here--the exile and the stranger, brave but frightened--to find a place where a
man could be his own man. They made a covenant with this land. Conceived in justice,
written in liberty, bound in union, it was meant one day to inspire the hopes of all
mankind; and it binds us still. If we keep its terms, we shall flourish.
JUSTICE AND CHANGE
First, justice was the promise that all who made the journey would share in the fruits of
the land.
In a land of great wealth, families must not live in hopeless poverty. In a land rich in
harvest, children just must not go hungry. In a land of healing miracles, neighbors must
not suffer and die unattended. In a great land of learning and scholars, young people must
be taught to read and write.
For the more than 30 years that I have served this Nation, I have believed that this
injustice to our people, this waste of our resources, was our real enemy. For 30 years or
more, with the resources I have had, I have vigilantly fought against it. I have learned,
and I know, that it will not surrender easily.
But change has given us new weapons. Before this generation of Americans is finished, this
enemy will not only retreat--it will be conquered.
Justice requires us to remember that when any citizen denies his fellow, saying, "His
color is not mine," or "His beliefs are strange and different," in that
moment he betrays America, though his forebears created this Nation.
LIBERTY AND CHANGE
Liberty was the second article of our covenant. It was self-government. It was our Bill of
Rights. But it was more. America would be a place where each man could be proud to be
himself: stretching his talents, rejoicing in his work, important in the life of his
neighbors and his nation.
This has become more difficult in a world where change and growth seem to tower beyond the
control and even the judgment of men. We must work to provide the knowledge and the
surroundings which can enlarge the possibilities of every citizen.
The American covenant called on us to help show the way for the liberation of man. And
that is today our goal. Thus, if as a nation there is much outside our control, as a
people no stranger is outside our hope.
Change has brought new meaning to that old mission. We can never again stand aside,
prideful in isolation. Terrific dangers and troubles that we once called
"foreign" now constantly live among us. If American lives must end, and American
treasure be spilled, in countries we barely know, that is the price that change has
demanded of conviction and of our enduring covenant.
Think of our world as it looks from the rocket that is heading toward Mars. It is like a
child's globe, hanging in space, the continents stuck to its side like colored maps. We
are all fellow passengers on a dot of earth. And each of us, in the span of time, has
really only a moment among our companions.
How incredible it is that in this fragile existence, we should hate and destroy one
another. There are possibilities enough for all who will abandon mastery over others to
pursue mastery over nature. There is world enough for all to seek their happiness in their
own way.
Our Nation's course is abundantly clear. We aspire to nothing that belongs to others. We
seek no dominion over our fellow man, but man's dominion over tyranny and misery.
But more is required. Men want to be a part of a common enterprise--a cause greater than
themselves. Each of us must find a way to advance the purpose of the Nation, thus finding
new purpose for ourselves. Without this, we shall become a nation of strangers.
UNION AND CHANGE
The third article was union. To those who were small and few against the wilderness, the
success of liberty demanded the strength of union. Two centuries of change have made this
true again.
No longer need capitalist and worker, farmer and clerk, city and countryside, struggle to
divide our bounty. By working shoulder to shoulder, together we can increase the bounty of
all. We have discovered that every child who learns, every man who finds work, every sick
body that is made whole--like a candle added to an altar--brightens the hope of all the
faithful.
So let us reject any among us who seek to reopen old wounds and to rekindle old hatreds.
They stand in the way of a seeking nation.
Let us now join reason to faith and action to experience, to transform our unity of
interest into a unity of purpose. For the hour and the day and the time are here to
achieve progress without strife, to achieve change without hatred--not without difference
of opinion, but without the deep and abiding divisions which scar the union for
generations.
THE AMERICAN BELIEF
Under this covenant of justice, liberty, and union we have become a nation--prosperous,
great, and mighty. And we have kept our freedom. But we have no promise from God that our
greatness will endure. We have been allowed by Him to seek greatness with the sweat of our
hands and the strength of our spirit.
I do not believe that the Great Society is the ordered, changeless, and sterile battalion
of the ants. It is the excitement of becoming--always becoming, trying, probing, falling,
resting, and trying again--but always trying and always gaining.
In each generation, with toil and tears, we have had to earn our heritage again.
If we fail now, we shall have forgotten in abundance what we learned in hardship: that
democracy rests on faith, that freedom asks more than it gives, and that the judgment of
God is harshest on those who are most favored.
If we succeed, it will not be because of what we have, but it will be because of what we
are; not because of what we own, but, rather because of what we believe.
For we are a nation of believers. Underneath the clamor of building and the rush of our
day's pursuits, we are believers in justice and liberty and union, and in our own Union.
We believe that every man must someday be free. And we believe in ourselves.
Our enemies have always made the same mistake. In my lifetime--in depression and in
war--they have awaited our defeat. Each time, from the secret places of the American
heart, came forth the faith they could not see or that they could not even imagine. It
brought us victory. And it will again.
For this is what America is all about. It is the uncrossed desert and the unclimbed ridge.
It is the star that is not reached and the harvest sleeping in the unplowed ground. 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.
To these trusted public servants and to my family and those close friends of mine who have
followed me down a long, winding road, and to all the people of this Union and the world,
I will repeat today what I said on that sorrowful day in November 1963: "I will lead
and I will do the best I can."
But you must look within your own hearts to the old promises and to the old dream. They
will lead you best of all.
For myself, I ask only, in the words of an ancient leader: "Give me now wisdom and
knowledge, that I may go out and come in before this people: for who can judge this thy
people, that is so great?"
President Johnson's State of the Union Addresses: