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1、First Inaugural Address of Richard Milhous NixonMONDAY, JANUARY 20, 1969 Senator Dirksen, Mr. Chief Justice, Mr. Vice President, President Johnson, Vice President Humphrey, my fellow Americans-and my fellow citizens of the world community: I ask you to share with me today the majesty of this moment.
2、 In the orderly transfer of power, we celebrate the unity that keeps us free. Each moment in history is a fleeting time, precious and unique. But some stand out as moments of beginning, in which courses are set that shape decades or centuries. This can be such a moment. Forces now are converging tha
3、t make possible, for the first time, the hope that many of mans deepest aspirations can at last be realized. The spiraling pace of change allows us to contemplate, within our own lifetime, advances that once would have taken centuries. In throwing wide the horizons of space, we have discovered new h
4、orizons on earth. For the first time, because the people of the world want peace, and the leaders of the world are afraid of war, the times are on the side of peace. Eight years from now America will celebrate its 200th anniversary as a nation. Within the lifetime of most people now living, mankind
5、will celebrate that great new year which comes only once in a thousand years-the beginning of the third millennium. What kind of nation we will be, what kind of world we will live in, whether we shape the future in the image of our hopes, is ours to determine by our actions and our choices. The grea
6、test honor history can bestow is the title of peacemaker. This honor now beckons America-the chance to help lead the world at last out of the valley of turmoil, and onto that high ground of peace that man has dreamed of since the dawn of civilization. If we succeed, generations to come will say of u
7、s now living that we mastered our moment, that we helped make the world safe for mankind. This is our summons to greatness. I believe the American people are ready to answer this call. The second third of this century has been a time of proud achievement. We have made enormous strides in science and
8、 industry and agriculture. We have shared our wealth more broadly than ever. We have learned at last to manage a modern economy to assure its continued growth. We have given freedom new reach, and we have begun to make its promise real for black as well as for white. We see the hope of tomorrow in t
9、he youth of today. I know Americas youth. I believe in them. We can be proud that they are better educated, more committed, more passionately driven by conscience than any generation in our history. No people has ever been so close to the achievement of a just and abundant society, or so possessed o
10、f the will to achieve it. Because our strengths are so great, we can afford to appraise our weaknesses with candor and to approach them with hope. Standing in this same place a third of a century ago, Franklin Delano Roosevelt addressed a Nation ravaged by depression and gripped in fear. He could sa
11、y in surveying the Nations troubles: “They concern, thank God, only material things.“ Our crisis today is the reverse. We have found ourselves rich in goods, but ragged in spirit; reaching with magnificent precision for the moon, but falling into raucous discord on earth. We are caught in war, wanti
12、ng peace. We are torn by division, wanting unity. We see around us empty lives, wanting fulfillment. We see tasks that need doing, waiting for hands to do them. To a crisis of the spirit, we need an answer of the spirit. To find that answer, we need only look within ourselves. When we listen to “the
13、 better angels of our nature,“ we find that they celebrate the simple things, the basic things-such as goodness, decency, love, kindness. Greatness comes in simple trappings. The simple things are the ones most needed today if we are to surmount what divides us, and cement what unites us. To lower o
14、ur voices would be a simple thing. In these difficult years, America has suffered from a fever of words; from inflated rhetoric that promises more than it can deliver; from angry rhetoric that fans discontents into hatreds; from bombastic rhetoric that postures instead of persuading. We cannot learn
15、 from one another until we stop shouting at one another-until we speak quietly enough so that our words can be heard as well as our voices. For its part, government will listen. We will strive to listen in new ways-to the voices of quiet anguish, the voices that speak without words, the voices of th
16、e heart-to the injured voices, the anxious voices, the voices that have despaired of being heard. Those who have been left out, we will try to bring in. Those left behind, we will help to catch up. For all of our people, we will set as our goal the decent order that makes progress possible and our lives secure. As we reach toward our hopes, our task is to build on what has gone before-not turning away from the old, but turning toward
