Third Inaugural Address of Franklin D. Roovelt .
MONDAY, JANUARY 20, 1941.
On each national day of inauguration since 1789, the people have
renewed their n of dedication to the United States.
In Washington's day the task of the people was to create and weld
together a nation.
In Lincoln's day the task of the people was to prerve that Nation
from disruption from within.
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In this day the task of the people is to save that Nation and its
institutions from disruption from without.
To us there has come a time, in the midst of swift happenings, to
pau for a moment and take stock to recall what our place in
history has been, and to rediscover what we are and what we may
be. If we do not, we risk the real peril of inaction.
Lives of nations are determined not by the count of years, but by
the lifetime of the human spirit. The life of a man is three score
幼儿园老师讲故事years and ten: a little more, a little less. The life of a nation is the
fullness of the measure of its will to live.
There are men who doubt this. There are men who believe that
democracy, as a form of Government and a frame of life, is limited
or measured by a kind of mystical and artificial fate that, for some
unexplained reason, tyranny and slavery have become the surging
wave of the future and that freedom is an ebbing tide.
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But we Americans know that this is not true.
Eight years ago, when the life of this Republic emed frozen by a
fatalistic terror, we proved that this is not true. We were in the
midst of shock but we acted. We acted quickly, boldly,
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decisively.
The later years have been living years fruitful years for the
people of this democracy. For they have brought to us greater
curity and, I hope, a better understanding that life's ideals are to
be measured in other than material things.
Most vital to our prent and our future is this experience of a
democracy which successfully survived crisis at home; put away
many evil things; built new structures on enduring lines; and,
through it all, maintained the fact of its democracy.
For action has been taken within the three way framework of the
Constitution of the United States. The coordinate branches of the
Government continue freely to function. The Bill of Rights
remains inviolate. The freedom of elections is wholly maintained.
Prophets of the downfall of American democracy have en their
dire predictions come to naught.
Democracy is not dying.
We know it becau we have en it revive and grow.
We know it cannot die becau it is built on the unhampered
initiative of individual men and women joined together in a
common enterpri an enterpri undertaken and carried through
by the free expression of a free majority.
We know it becau democracy alone, of all forms of government,
enlists the full force of men's enlightened will.
We know it becau democracy alone has constructed an unlimit
ed
civilization capable of infinite progress in the improvement of
human life.
We know it becau, if we look below the surface, we n it still
spreading on every continent for it is the most humane, the most
advanced, and in the end the most unconquerable of all forms of
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human society.
A nation, like a person, has a body a body that must be fed and
clothed and houd, invigorated and rested, in a manner that
measures up to the objectives of our time.
A nation, like a person, has a mind a mind that must be kept
informed and alert, that must know itlf, that understands the
hopes and the needs of its neighbors all the other nations that live
within the narrowing circle of the world.
And a nation, like a person, has something deeper, something more
permanent, something larger than the sum of all its parts. It is that
something which matters most to its future which calls forth the
most sacred guarding of its prent.
It is a thing for which we find it difficult even impossible to hit
upon a single, simple word.
And yet we all understand what it is the spirit the faith of
America. It is the product of centuries. It was born in the
multitudes of tho who came from many lands some of high
degree, but mostly plain people, who sought here, early and late, to
find freedom more freely.
The democratic aspiration is no mere recent pha in human
history. It is human history. It permeated the ancient life of early
peoples. It blazed anew in the middle ages. It was written in Magna
Charta.
In the Americas its impact has been irresistible. America has been
the New World in all tongues, to all peoples, not becau this
continent was a new found land, but becau all tho who came
here believed they could create upon this continent a new life a
life that should be new in freedom.
Its vitality was written into our own Mayflower Compact, into the
Declaration of Independence, into the Constitution of the United
States, into the Gettysburg Address.
Tho who first came here to carry out the longings of their spirit,
and the millions who followed, and the stock that sprang from
them all have moved forward constantly and consistently toward
an ideal which in itlf has gained stature and clarity with each
generation.
The hopes of the Republic cannot forever tolerate either
underved poverty or lf rving wealth.
We know that we still have far to go; that we must more greatly 阿凡达2电影
build the curity and the opportunity and the knowledge of every
citizen, in the measure justified by the resources and the capacity
of the land.
But it is not enough to achieve the purpos alone. It is not
enough to clothe and feed the body of this Nation, and instruct and
inform its mind. For there is also the spirit. And of the three, the
greatest is the spirit.
Without the body and the mind, as all men know, the Nation could
not live.
But if the spirit of America were killed, even though the Nation's
body and mind, constricted in an alien world, lived on, the
America we know would have perished.
That spirit that faith speaks to us in our daily lives in ways
often unnoticed, becau they em so obvious. It speaks to us here
in the Capital of the Nation. It speaks to us through the process
of governing in the sovereignties of 48 States. It speaks to us in our
counties, in our cities, in our towns, and in our villages. It speaks
退学申请怎么写to us from the other nations of the hemisphere, and from tho
across the as the enslaved, as well as the free. Sometimes we
fail to hear or heed the voices of freedom becau to us the
privilege of our freedom is such an old, old story.
The destiny of America was proclaimed in words of prophecy
spoken by our first President in his first inaugural in 1789 words
almost directed, it would em, to this year of 1941: "The
prervation of the sacred fire of liberty and the destiny of the
republican model of government are justly considered . . .
deeply, . . . finally, staked on the experiment intrusted to the hands
of the American people. "
If we lo that sacred fire if we let it be smothered with doubt
and fear then we shall reject the destiny which Washington
strove so valiantly and so triumphantly to establish. The
prervation of the spirit and faith of the Nation does, and will,
furnish the highest justification for every sacrifice that we may
make in the cau of national defen.
18岁的生日祝福In the face of great perils never before encountered, our strong
purpo is to protect and to perpetuate the integrity of democracy.
For this we muster the spirit of America, and the faith of America.
We do not retreat. We are not content to stand still. As Americans,
we go forward, in the rvice of our country, by the will of God.
