time.

From the perspective of a single day, including this day of dedication,
the issues and questions before our country are many. From the viewpoint
of centuries, the questions that come to us are narrowed and few. Did
our generation advance the cause of freedom? And did our character bring
credit to that cause?

These questions that judge us also unite us, because Americans of every
party and background, Americans by choice and by birth, are bound to one
another in the cause of freedom. We have known divisions, which must
be healed to move forward in great purposes--and I will strive in good
faith to heal them. Yet those divisions do not define America. We felt
the unity and fellowship of our nation when freedom came under attack,
and our response came like a single hand over a single heart. And we can
feel that same unity and pride whenever America acts for good, and the
victims of disaster are given hope, and the unjust encounter justice,
and the captives are set free.

We go forward with complete confidence in the eventual triumph of
freedom. Not because history runs on the wheels of inevitability; it
is human choices that move events. Not because we consider ourselves
a chosen nation; God moves and chooses as He wills. We have confidence
because freedom is the permanent hope of mankind, the hunger in dark
places, the longing of the soul. When our Founders declared a new order
of the ages; when soldiers died in wave upon wave for a union based
on liberty; when citizens marched in peaceful outrage under the banner
"Freedom Now"--they were acting on an ancient hope that is meant to be
fulfilled. History has an ebb and flow of justice, but history also has
a visible direction, set by liberty and the Author of Liberty.

When the Declaration of Independence was first read in public and the
Liberty Bell was sounded in celebration, a witness said, "It rang as if
it meant something." In our time it means something still. America, in
this young century, proclaims liberty throughout all the world, and to
all the inhabitants thereof. Renewed in our strength--tested, but not
weary--we are ready for the greatest achievements in the history of
freedom.

May God bless you, and may He watch over the United States of America.

*****

Text of President Barack Obama's inaugural address on Tuesday, as
prepared for delivery and released by the Presidential Inaugural
Committee.

OBAMA: My fellow citizens:

I stand here tod