We’re never going to achieve perfection. Certainly not in a democracy. But we can do better. And it’s a slow process of doing better each and each generation. With setbacks, with failures, but then we keep on going. Our grandparents, our parents. It’s that process that ultimately is a great responsibility for all of us. But it is also a remarkable privilege to make this world better.
I believe those of us who believe in democracy have to acknowledge the anxieties and frustrations that rapid economic and cultural and demographic changes have brought, and we have to find a language, a story of how we can affirm the best of traditional values in our respective countries or respective communities. We have to create a space for our differences, while insisting that our politics and our governmental institutions uphold the overarching principles of equality for all people.
It’s been said that those we most deeply love, we can never truly lose, for they become part of us. Almost 10 years after an act of unspeakable violence shattered the quiet community of Newtown, the souls that were lost that day, those of 20 beautiful children and six courageous adults, their souls remain part of us.
If we persevere in the career in which we have advanced so far and in the path already traced, we can not fail, under the favor of a gracious Providence, to attain the high destiny which seems to await us.
We’re here because we believe that humanity can bridge our differences and make better choices, that we can see each other and listen to each other, and imagine each other’s hardships and pain, and that this better future is most likely to happen under democratic systems of government, democracies in which everyone’s dignity is recognized, where the rule of law and human rights are respected by everybody, where people have a voice in how they’re governed, where we all have a stake in maintaining the social order, and where we can disagree with each other, sometimes bitterly, without losing sight of the ties that bind us together.
You don’t need all of the answers on your graduation day. What you need today is to have confidence and trust in what you decide is your moonshot. Confidence that you will do what is hard and trust that you can achieve what is great. Confidence and trust that you will be a part of something larger than any one person.
“We the people, in order to form a more perfect union.” Two hundred and twenty-one years ago, in a hall that still stands across the street, a group of men gathered and, with these simple words, launched America’s improbable experiment in democracy.
John Hope Franklin once said, “Good history is a good foundation for a better present and future.” The best history doesn’t just sit behind a glass case; it helps us to understand what’s outside the case. The best history helps us recognize the mistakes that we’ve made and the dark corners of the human spirit that we need to guard against.
A nation reveals itself not only by the people it produces, but by those it remembers. We do so not just by hoisting a flag, but by lifting up our neighbors. Not just by pausing in silence, but by practicing in our own lives the ideals of opportunity and liberty and equality that they fought for.
Equal pay for equal work should be a fundamental principle of our economy. It’s the idea that whether you’re a high school teacher, a business executive, or a professional soccer player or tennis player, your work should be equally valued and rewarded, whether you are a man or a woman.
We look forward to a world founded upon four essential human freedoms. The first is freedom of speech and expression–everywhere in the world. The second is freedom of every person to worship God in his own way–everywhere in the world. The third is freedom from want. The fourth is freedom from fear.
People of the world – look at Berlin, where a wall came down, a continent came together, and history proved that there is no challenge too great for a world that stands as one. Sixty years after the airlift, we are called upon again. History has led us to a new crossroad, with new promise and new peril.
When the public voice called for war, all knew, and still know, that without them it could not be carried on through the period which it might last, and the patriotism, the good sense, and the manly spirit of our fellow-citizens are pledges for the cheerfulness with which they will bear each his share of the common burden.
It is that our two nations, divided by distance, have been united by history. No people ever believed more deeply in the cause of Irish freedom than the people of the United States. And no country contributed more to building my own than your sons and daughters.
I look forward to an America which will reward achievement in the arts as we reward achievement in business or statecraft. I look forward to an America which will steadily raise the standards of artistic accomplishment and which will steadily enlarge cultural opportunities for all of our citizens.
We have no excuse for defeatism. We have every good reason for hope — hope for peace, yes, and hope for the defense of our civilization and for the building of a better civilization in the future. I have the profound conviction that the American people are now determined to put forth a mightier effort than they have ever yet made to increase our production of all the implements of defense, to meet the threat to our democratic faith.
Freedom is indivisible, and when one man is enslaved, all are not free. When all are free, then we can look forward to that day when this city will be joined as one and this country and this great Continent of Europe in a peaceful and hopeful globe. When that day finally comes, as it will, the people of West Berlin can take sober satisfaction in the fact that they were in the front lines for almost two decades.
No matter what you want to do with your life, you want to be a doctor, or a teacher, or a police officer? You want to be a nurse or an architect, a lawyer or a member of our military? You’re going to need a good education for every single one of those careers. You cannot drop out of school and just drop into a good job. You’ve got to train for it and work for it and learn for it.
Equality of opportunity does not mean equality of responsibility. All Americans must be responsible citizens, but some must be more responsible than others, by virtue of their public or their private position, their role in the family or community, their prospects for the future, or their legacy from the past. Increased responsibility goes with increased ability, for “of those to whom much is given, much is required.”
My fellow Americans, it has been the honor of my life to serve you. For now, whether you are young or whether you’re young at heart, I do have one final ask of you as your President — the same thing I asked when you took a chance on me eight years ago. I’m asking you to believe. Not in my ability to bring about change — but in yours.
