Barack Obama Inauguration Speech Page #5

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They will not be met easily

or in a short span of time.

But know this,

America - they will be met.

On this day,

we gather because

we have chosen hope over fear,

unity of purpose over

conflict and discord.

On this day,

we come to proclaim

an end to the petty grievances

and false promises,

the recriminations

and worn out dogmas

that for far too long

have strangled our politics.

We remain a young nation,

but in the words of Scripture,

the time has come to

set aside childish things.

The time has come to

reaffirm our enduring spirit,

to choose our better history,

to carry forward that precious gift

that noble idea passed on from

generation to generation:

the God-given promise

that all are equal,

all are free,

and all deserve a chance

to pursue their full

measure of happiness.

In reaffirming

the greatness of our nation,

we understand

that greatness is never a given.

It must be earned.

Our journey has never been

one of short-cuts or settling for less.

It has not been

the path for the faint-hearted,

for those who prefer

leisure over work,

or seek only the pleasures

of riches and fame.

Rather, it has been the risk-takers,

the doers, the makers of things;

some celebrated, but more often

men and women obscure in their labor

who have carried us up the long, rugged

path towards prosperity and freedom.

For us,

they packed up

their few worldly possessions

and traveled across oceans

in search of a new life.

For us,

they toiled in sweatshops

and settled the West,

endured the lash of

the whip and plowed the hard earth.

For us, they fought and died

in places like Concord and Gettysburg,

Normandy and Khe Sanh.

Time and again, these

men and women struggled

and sacrificed and worked

till their hands were raw

so that we might live a better life.

They saw America as bigger

than the sum of

our individual ambitions,

greater than all the differences

of birth or wealth or faction.

This is the journey

we continue today.

We remain the most prosperous,

powerful nation on Earth.

Our workers are no less productive

than when this crisis began.

Our minds are no less inventive,

our goods and services

no less needed

than they were last week

or last month or last year.

Our capacity remains undiminished.

But our time of standing pat,

of protecting narrow interests

and putting off unpleasant decisions,

that time has surely passed.

Starting today,

we must pick ourselves up,

dust ourselves off,

and begin again

the work of remaking America.

For everywhere we look,

there is work to be done.

The state of

the economy calls for action

bold and swift, and we will act,

not only to create new jobs,

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