Famous Inauguration Speech Quotes
Will Obama Phrases Land in History Books Alongside FDR, JFK?
Jan 9, 2009 Grace Lichtenstein
Phrases from the presidential addresses of Abraham Lincoln, John F. Kennedy, Franklin D.Roosevelt, and Thomas Jefferson made history and became historic.. Listeners worldwide will judge whether the graceful prose of Barack Obama will take its place besides that of his predecessors.
“Fear Itself”
Recently, the phrase most often referred to from an inauguration speech was uttered by FDR when he took office in March, 1933 in the depths of the Great Depression:
“The only thing we have to fear is fear itself—nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.
Four years later, conditions had improved but not enough to suit Roosevelt, who said:
“I see one-third of a nation ill-housed, ill-clad, ill-nourished.”
“Better Angels”
Perhaps the most poetic inaugural phrases were delivered by Abraham Lincoln on the eve of the Civil War in 1861:
“The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.”
“Malice Toward None”
And Lincoln moved the nation at the close of the Civil War. Delivering his second inaugural a month before being assassinated, he declared:
“With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace.”
“All Republicans”
The most famous early inaugural comment was that of Thomas Jefferson in 1801, referring to the extremely close election of 1800 that was finally decided by the House of representatives:
“Every difference of opinion is not a difference of principle. We have called by different names brethren of the same principle. We are all Republicans, we are all Federalists.”
“Ask Not”
John F. Kennedy was striving for great oratory in January 1961 and achieved it when he declared:
“My fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you - ask what you can do for your country. My fellow citizens of the world: ask not what America will do for you, but what together we can do for the freedom of man."
Recently when his speechwriter Theodore Sorensen was questioned about whether the phrase was actually written by him or by Kennedy himself, he demurred, saying:
“Ask not.”
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