anded 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