Inaugural Address

Summary

John F. Kennedy took the oath of office from Chief Justice Earl Warren on the east front of the Capitol at noon on 20 January 1961, the morning after a heavy snowfall, in bitter cold. Robert Frost had just recited The Gift Outright from memory when glare kept him from reading the poem he had written for the day. Kennedy's address, prepared with his aide Theodore Sorensen, ran under fifteen minutes, among the shortest of modern inaugurals. He opens by calling the day a celebration of freedom rather than a victory of party and reminds his hearers that the rights of man come not from the state but from the hand of God. Announcing that the torch has passed to a new generation born in this century, he pledges that America will pay any price and bear any burden to assure the survival of liberty. The central section is a series of pledges addressed in turn to old allies, to newly independent states, to the world's poor, to the republics of Latin America in a new alliance for progress, and to the United Nations. To the nation's adversaries he offers not a pledge but a request: that both sides begin anew the quest for peace before the dark powers of science engulf humanity. A run of sentences beginning Let both sides proposes inspection and control of arms, cooperation in exploring the stars and eradicating disease, and obedience to Isaiah's command to undo heavy burdens. Kennedy then admits that none of this will be finished in a hundred days or a lifetime, and calls his generation to a long twilight struggle against tyranny, poverty, disease, and war, rejoicing in hope and patient in tribulation. He welcomes the responsibility of defending freedom in its hour of maximum danger and gives his most famous charge: ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country. He closes by asking God's blessing while insisting that on earth God's work must truly be our own. The address was received as a defining statement of Cold War idealism and remains one of the most quoted American speeches.

Top Lessons

• Rights from the hand of God

  Early in the address Kennedy states that the rights of man come not from the generosity of the state but from the hand of God. He presents this as the revolutionary belief of 1776, still at issue around the world, and it grounds every pledge that follows.

• Strength and civility together

  Kennedy refuses to choose between deterrence and diplomacy. Only arms sufficient beyond doubt, he argues, make war unlikely, yet civility is not weakness, and the nation must never negotiate out of fear nor fear to negotiate.

• Citizenship as service

  The famous charge reverses the usual expectation of what government owes citizens. Kennedy places the final success or failure of the nation's course in their hands and calls them to bear the burden of a long struggle rather than to wait for benefits.

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