strong to do Your work, willing to
heed and hear Your will, and write on our hearts these words: "Use power
to help people." For we are given power not to advance our own purposes,
nor to make a great show in the world, nor a name. There is but one just
use of power, and it is to serve people. Help us to remember it, Lord.
Amen.

I come before you and assume the Presidency at a moment rich with
promise. We live in a peaceful, prosperous time, but we can make it
better. For a new breeze is blowing, and a world refreshed by freedom
seems reborn; for in man's heart, if not in fact, the day of the
dictator is over. The totalitarian era is passing, its old ideas
blown away like leaves from an ancient, lifeless tree. A new breeze
is blowing, and a nation refreshed by freedom stands ready to push on.
There is new ground to be broken, and new action to be taken. There are
times when the future seems thick as a fog; you sit and wait, hoping the
mists will lift and reveal the right path. But this is a time when
the future seems a door you can walk right through into a room called
tomorrow.

Great nations of the world are moving toward democracy through the door
to freedom. Men and women of the world move toward free markets through
the door to prosperity. The people of the world agitate for free
expression and free thought through the door to the moral and
intellectual satisfactions that only liberty allows.

We know what works: Freedom works. We know what's right: Freedom is
right. We know how to secure a more just and prosperous life for man
on Earth: through free markets, free speech, free elections, and the
exercise of free will unhampered by the state.

For the first time in this century, for the first time in perhaps all
history, man does not have to invent a system by which to live. We
don't have to talk late into the night about which form of government is
better. We don't have to wrest justice from the kings. We only have to
summon it from within ourselves. We must act on what we know. I take
as my guide the hope of a saint: In crucial things, unity; in important
things, diversity; in all things, generosity.

America today is a proud, free nation, decent and civil, a place we
cannot help but love. We know in our hearts, not loudly and proudly, but
as a simple fact, that this country has meaning beyond what we see, and
that our strength is a force for good. But have we changed as a
nation even in our time? Are we e