Speech Transcript:

Mr. Chief Justice, Mr. President, Vice President Quayle, Senator
Mitchell, Speaker Wright, Senator Dole, Congressman Michel, and
fellow citizens, neighbors, and friends:

There is a man here who has earned a lasting place in our hearts and
in our history. President Reagan, on behalf of our Nation, I thank
you for the wonderful things that you have done for America.

I have just repeated word for word the oath taken by George
Washington 200 years ago, and the Bible on which I placed my hand is
the Bible on which he placed his. It is right that the memory of
Washington be with us today, not only because this is our
Bicentennial Inauguration, but because Washington remains the Father
of our Country. And he would, I think, be gladdened by this day; for
today is the concrete expression of a stunning fact: our continuity
these 200 years since our government began.

We meet on democracy's front porch, a good place to talk as neighbors
and as friends. For this is a day when our nation is made whole, when
our differences, for a moment, are suspended.

And my first act as President is a prayer. I ask you to bow your
heads:

Heavenly Father, we bow our heads and thank You for Your love. Accept
our thanks for the peace that yields this day and the shared faith
that makes its continuance likely. Make us 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 enthralled with material things,
less appreciative of the nobility of work and sacrifice?

My friends, we are not the sum of our possessions. They are not the
measure of our lives. In our hearts we know what matters. We cannot
hope only to leave our children a bigger car, a bigger bank account.
We must hope to give them a sense of what it means to be a loyal
friend, a loving parent, a citizen who leaves his home, his
neighborhood and town better than he found it. What do we want the
men and women who work with us to say when we are no longer there?
That we were more driven to succeed than anyone around us? Or that we
stopped to ask if a sick child had gotten better, and stayed a moment
there to trade a word of friendship?

No President, no government, can teach us to remember what is best in
what we are. But if the man you have chosen to lead this government
can help make a difference; if he can celebrate the quieter, deeper
successes that are made not of gold and silk, but of better hearts
and finer souls; if he can do these things, then he must.

America is never wholly herself unless she is engaged in high moral
principle. We as a people have such a purpose today. It is to make
kinder the face of the Nation and gentler the face of the world. My
friends, we have work to do. There are the homeless, lost and
roaming. There are the children who have nothing, no love, no
normalcy. There are those who cannot free themselves of enslavement
to whatever addiction--drugs, welfare, the demoralization that rules
the slums. There is crime to be conquered, the rough crime of the
streets. There are young women to be helped who are about to become
mothers of children they can't care for and might not love. They need
our care, our guidance, and our education, though we bless them for
choosing life.

The old solution, the old way, was to think that public money alone
could end these problems. But we have learned that is not so. And in
any case, our funds are low. We have a deficit to bring down. We have
more will than wallet; but will is what we need. We will make the hard
choices, looking at what we have and perhaps allocating it
differently, making our decisions based on honest need and prudent
safety. And then we will do the wisest thing of all: We will turn to
the only resource we have that in times of need always grows--the
goodness and the courage of the American people.

I am speaking of a new engagement in the lives of others, a new
activism, hands-on and involved, that gets the job done. We must
bring in the generations, harnessing the unused talent of the elderly
and the unfocused energy of the young. For not only leadership is
passed from generation to generation, but so is stewardship. And the
generation born after the Second World War has come of age.

I have spoken of a thousand points of light, of all the community
organizations that are spread like stars throughout the Nation, doing
good. We will work hand in hand, encouraging, sometimes leading,
sometimes being led, rewarding. We will work on this in the White
House, in the Cabinet agencies. I will go to the people and the
programs that are the brighter points of light, and I will ask every
member of my government to become involved. The old ideas are new
again because they are not old, they are timeless: duty, sacrifice,
commitment, and a patriotism that finds its expression in taking part
and pitching in.

We need a new engagement, too, between the Executive and the
Congress. The challenges before us will be thrashed out with the
House and the Senate. We must bring the Federal budget into balance.
And we must ensure that America stands before the world united,
strong, at peace, and fiscally sound. But, of course, things may be
difficult. We need compromise; we have had dissension. We need
harmony; we have had a chorus of discordant voices.

For Congress, too, has changed in our time. There has grown a certain
divisiveness. We have seen the hard looks and heard the statements in
which not each other's ideas are challenged, but each other's
motives. And our great parties have too often been far apart and
untrusting of each other. It has been this way since Vietnam. That
war cleaves us still. But, friends, that war began in earnest a
quarter of a century ago; and surely the statute of limitations has
been reached. This is a fact: The final lesson of Vietnam is that no
great nation can long afford to be sundered by a memory. A new breeze
is blowing, and the old bipartisanship must be made new again.

To my friends--and yes, I do mean friends--in the loyal
opposition--and yes, I mean loyal: I put out my hand. I am putting
out my hand to you, Mr. Speaker. I am putting out my hand to you, Mr.
Majority Leader. For this is the thing: This is the age of the offered
hand. We can't turn back clocks, and I don't want to. But when our
fathers were young, Mr. Speaker, our differences ended at the water's
edge. And we don't wish to turn back time, but when our mothers were
young, Mr. Majority Leader, the Congress and the Executive were
capable of working together to produce a budget on which this nation
could live. Let us negotiate soon and hard. But in the end, let us
produce. The American people await action. They didn't send us here
to bicker. They ask us to rise above the merely partisan. "In crucial
things, unity"--and this, my friends, is crucial.

To the world, too, we offer new engagement and a renewed vow: We will
stay strong to protect the peace. The "offered hand" is a reluctant
fist; but once made, strong, and can be used with great effect. There
are today Americans who are held against their will in foreign lands,
and Americans who are unaccounted for. Assistance can be shown here,
and will be long remembered. Good will begets good will. Good faith
can be a spiral that endlessly moves on.

Great nations like great men must keep their word. When America says
something, America means it, whether a treaty or an agreement or a
vow made on marble steps. We will always try to speak clearly, for
candor is a compliment, but subtlety, too, is good and has its place.
While keeping our alliances and friendships around the world strong,
ever strong, we will continue the new closeness with the Soviet
Union, consistent both with our security and with progress. One might
say that our new relationship in part reflects the triumph of hope and
strength over experience. But hope is good, and so are strength and
vigilance.

Here today are tens of thousands of our citizens who feel the
understandable satisfaction of those who have taken part in democracy
and seen their hopes fulfilled. But my thoughts have been turning the
past few days to those who would be watching at home, to an older
fellow who will throw a salute by himself when the flag goes by, and
the women who will tell her sons the words of the battle hymns. I
don't mean this to be sentimental. I mean that on days like this, we
remember that we are all part of a continuum, inescapably connected
by the ties that bind.

Our children are watching in schools throughout our great land. And
to them I say, thank you for watching democracy's big day. For
democracy belongs to us all, and freedom is like a beautiful kite
that can go higher and higher with the breeze. And to all I say: No
matter what your circumstances or where you are, you are part of this
day, you are part of the life of our great nation.

A President is neither prince nor pope, and I don't seek a window on
men's souls. In fact, I yearn for a greater tolerance, an
easy-goingness about each other's attitudes and way of life.

There are few clear areas in which we as a society must rise up
united and express our intolerance. The most obvious now is drugs.
And when that first cocaine was smuggled in on a ship, it may as well
have been a deadly bacteria, so much has it hurt the body, the soul of
our country. And there is much to be done and to be said, but take my
word for it: This scourge will stop.

And so, there is much to do; and tomorrow the work begins. I do not
mistrust the future; I do not fear what is ahead. For our problems
are large, but our heart is larger. Our challenges are great, but our
will is greater. And if our flaws are endless, God's love is truly
boundless.

Some see leadership as high drama, and the sound of trumpets calling,
and sometimes it is that. But I see history as a book with many pages,
and each day we fill a page with acts of hopefulness and meaning. The
new breeze blows, a page turns, the story unfolds. And so today a
chapter begins, a small and stately story of unity, diversity, and
generosity--shared, and written, together.

Thank you. God bless you and God bless the United States of America.