 In the highest tradition of our form of government, we are here today to inaugurate the 36th President of the United States. It is a great honor for me as Chairman of the Committee on Arrangements for this event to begin our program by presenting the United States Marine Band onto the direction of Lieutenant Colonel Albert Schoeper, who will now play a song we all love, Stars and Stripes Forever. And Robin E. Lacey pronounced the implication. Almighty and eternal God, we ask a blessing upon all who are gathered here today to honor the Chief Executive and the Vice President of our nation. We pray that Almighty God may grant to the leader of our country wisdom and understanding, strength and courage. In these days of stress and strife, in the hour of faithful decision, may God make clear to our President the path of honor and of peace, the path of freedom and justice, the path of brotherhood and truth, that truth that makes men free. Amen. We will now have the pleasure of hearing the special arrangement of America the Beautiful by Ms. Leon Jean Price, accompanied by the United States Marine Band. Almighty God, we thank thee for this inaugural, the living historic witness to our faith in thee and to the choice and actions of a free people here at the capital of our nation, the very sight of which exalts our hearts and awakens thrilling memories of the preeminent men of our resplendent past. We pray for thy blessings upon our beloved President, the Vice President and those associated with them in the sacred trust of leadership. The Speaker of the House of Representatives will now admonish to the oath of order to devise President-elect. Do you solemnly swear that you will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic? I, Hubert Horatial Humphrey, do solemnly swear that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic. That you will bear true faith and allegiance to the same. That I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same. That you take this obligation freely. I take this obligation freely without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion. And that you will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which you are about to enter. And that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office about which I am about to enter. So help you, God. So help me, God. Reverend George R. Davis will now lead us in prayer. Please rise. God of our fathers, to whom persons are of supreme importance, we lift up this day a man to be set apart in a special way. In our love and prayers through this historic and exalting ceremony, we lift him up as we do the vice president and their gracious families. To thy strong help, we commend them and all men and women in all areas and branches of our nation's life, who share the terrible splendor of leadership and authority. Thus we pray in the name of him who is the wonderful counselor, the mighty God, the everlasting father, the Prince of Peace. Amen. The oath of office will now be admitted to the president by the Chief Justice of the United States. James Johnson do solemnly swear that you will faithfully execute, that I will faithfully execute, the office of the presidency of the United States, the office of the presidency of the United States, and will to the best of your ability, and will to the best of my ability. Reserve, protect, and defend, reserve, protect, and defend, the Constitution of the United States, the Constitution of the United States. So help you God, so help me God. On this occasion, the oath I have taken before you, and before God, is not mine alone, but ours together. We are one nation and one people. Our faith as a nation and our future as a people rests not upon one citizen, but upon all citizens. That is the majesty and the meaning of this moment. For every generation there is a destiny. For some history decides for this generation the choice must be our own. Even now a rocket moves toward Mars. It reminds us that the world will not be the same for our children or even for ourselves in a short span of years. The next man to stand here will look out on a scene that is different from our own because ours is a time of change. Great and fantastic change bearing the secrets of nature, multiplying the nations, placing in uncertain hands new weapons for mastery and destruction, shaking old values and uprooting old ways. Our destiny in the midst of change will rest on the unchanged character of our people and on their faith. They came here, the exile and the stranger, brave but frightened, to find a place where a man could be his own man. They made a covenant with this land, conceived injustice, written in liberty, bound in union. It was meant one day to inspire the hopes of all mankind and it binds us still. If we keep its terms we shall flourish under this covenant of justice, liberty and union. We have become a nation, prosperous, great and mighty, and we have kept our freedom. Do we have no promise from God that our greatness will endure? We have been allowed by him to seek greatness with the sweat of our hands and the strength of our spirit. I do not believe that the great society is the ordered, changeless and sterile battalion of the ants. It is the excitement of becoming, always becoming, trying, probing, falling, resting and trying again, but always trying and always gaining in each generation with toil and tears. We have had to earn our heritage again. If we fail now then we will have forgotten in abundance what we learn in hardship. That democracy rests on faith, that freedom asks more than it gives and the judgment of God is harshest on those who are most favored if we succeed. It will not be because of what we have, but it will be because of what we are. Not because of what we own, but rather because of what we believe. We are a nation of believers underneath the clamor of building and the rush of our day's suits. We are believers in justice and liberty and union and in our own union. We believe that every man must someday be free. We believe in ourselves and that is the mistake that our enemies have always made in my lifetime in depression and in war. They have awaited our defeat each time from the secret places of the American heart came forth the faith that they could not see or that they could not even imagine and it brought us victory and it will again. For this is what America is all about. It is the uncrossed desert and the unplanned ridge. It is the star that is not reached and the harvest that's sleeping in the unplowed ground. Is our world gone? We say farewell. There's a new world coming. We welcome it and we will bend it to the hopes of man and to these trusted public servants and to my family and those close friends of mine who have followed me down a long winding road and to all the people of this union and the world. I will repeat today what I said on that sorrowful day in November last year. I will lead and I will do the best I can. But you, you must look within your own hearts to the old promises and to the old dream. They will lead you best of all. For myself I ask only in the words of an ancient leader. Give me now wisdom and knowledge that I may go out and come in before this people. For who can judge this, thy people, that is so great. Our fate as a nation and our future as a people, not upon one citizen, but upon all citizens is the majesty and the meaning of this moment.