And so each citizen plays an indispensable role.  The productivity of our heads, our hands, and our hearts is the source of all the strength we can command, for both the enrichment of our lives and the winning of the peace.

No person, no home, no community can be beyond the reach of this call.  We are summoned to act in wisdom and in conscience, to work with industry, to teach with persuasion, to preach with conviction, to weigh our every deed with care and with compassion.  For this truth must be clear before us:  whatever America hopes to bring to pass in the world must first come to pass in the heart of America.

The peace we seek, then, is nothing less than the practice and fulfillment of our whole faith among ourselves and in our dealings with others.  This signifies more than the stilling of guns, easing the sorrow of war.  More than escape from death, it is a way of life.  More than a haven for the weary, it is a hope for the brave.

This is the hope that beckons us onward in this century of trial.  This is the work that awaits us all, to be done with bravery, with charity, and with prayer to Almighty God.

***

Dwight D. Eisenhower
Second Inaugural Address
Monday, January 21, 1957

THE PRICE OF PEACE

Mr. Chairman, Mr. Vice President, Mr. Chief Justice, Mr. Speaker, members of my family and friends, my countrymen, and the friends of my country, wherever they may be, we meet again, as upon a like moment four years ago, and again you have witnessed my solemn oath of service to you.

I, too, am a witness, today testifying in your name to the principles and purposes to which we, as a people, are pledged.

Before all else, we seek, upon our common labor as a nation, the blessings of Almighty God.  And the hopes in our hearts fashion the deepest prayers of our whole people.

May we pursue the right—­without self-righteousness.

May we know unity—­without conformity.

May we grow in strength—­without pride in self.

May we, in our dealings with all peoples of the earth, ever speak truth and serve justice.

And so shall America—­in the sight of all men of good will—­prove true to the honorable purposes that bind and rule us as a people in all this time of trial through which we pass.

We live in a land of plenty, but rarely has this earth known such peril as today.

In our nation work and wealth abound.  Our population grows.  Commerce crowds our rivers and rails, our skies, harbors, and highways.  Our soil is fertile, our agriculture productive.  The air rings with the song of our industry—­rolling mills and blast furnaces, dynamos, dams, and assembly lines—­the chorus of America the bountiful.

This is our home—­yet this is not the whole of our world.  For our world is where our full destiny lies—­with men, of all people, and all nations, who are or would be free.  And for them—­and so for us—­this is no time of ease or of rest.