In all your deliberations you should remember that the purpose of legislation is to translate principles into action.  It is an effort to have our country be better by doing better.  Because the thoughts and ways of people are firmly fixed and not easily changed, the field within which immediate improvement can be secured is very narrow.  Legislation can provide opportunity.  Whether it is taken advantage of or not depends upon the people themselves.  The Government of the United States has been created by the people.  It is solely responsible to them.  It will be most successful if it is conducted solely for their benefit.  All its efforts would be of little avail unless they brought more justice, more enlightenment, more happiness and prosperity into the home.  This means an opportunity to observe religion, secure education, and earn a living under a reign of law and order.  It is the growth and improvement of the material and spiritual life of the Nation.  We shall not be able to gain these ends merely by our own action.  If they come at all, it will be because we have been willing to work in harmony with the abiding purpose of a Divine Providence.

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State of the Union Address
Calvin Coolidge
December 7, 1926

Members of the Congress: 

In reporting to the Congress the state of the Union, I find it impossible to characterize it other than one of general peace and prosperity.  In some quarters our diplomacy is vexed with difficult and as yet unsolved problems, but nowhere are we met with armed conflict.  If some occupations and areas are not flourishing, in none does there remain any acute chronic depression.  What the country requires is not so much new policies as a steady continuation of those which are already being crowned with such abundant success.  It can not be too often repeated that in common with all the world we are engaged in liquidating the war.

In the present short session no great amount of new legislation is possible, but in order to comprehend what is most desirable some survey of our general situation is necessary.  A large amount of time is consumed in the passage of appropriation bills.  If each Congress in its opening session would make appropriations to continue for two years, very much time would be saved which could either be devoted to a consideration of the general needs of the country or would result in decreasing the work of legislation.  Economy

Our present state of prosperity has been greatly promoted by three important causes, one of which is economy, resulting in reduction and reform in national taxation.  Another is the elimination of many kinds of waste.  The third is a general raising of the standards of efficiency.  This combination has brought the perfectly astonishing result of a reduction in the index price of commodities and an increase in the index rate of wages.  We have secured a lowering of the cost to produce and a raising of the ability to consume.  Prosperity resulting from these causes rests on the securest of all foundations.  It gathers strength from its own progress.