Greatness comes in simple trappings.
The simple things are the ones most needed today if we are to
surmount what divides us, and cement what unites us.
To lower our voices would be a simple thing.
In these difficult years, America has suffered from a fever of
words; from inflated rhetoric that promises more than it can
deliver; from angry rhetoric that fans discontents into hatreds;
from bombastic rhetoric that postures instead of persuading.
We cannot learn from one another until we stop shouting at one
another--until we speak quietly enough so that our words can be
heard as well as our voices.
For its part, government will listen. We will strive to listen in
new ways--to the voices of quiet anguish, the voices that speak
without words, the voices of the heart--to the injured voices, the
anxious voices, the voices that have despaired of being heard.
Those who have been left out, we will try to bring in.
Those left behind, we will help to catch up.
For all of our people, we will set as our goal the decent order
that makes progress possible and our lives secure.
As we reach toward our hopes, our task is to build on what has
gone before--not turning away from the old, but turning toward the
new.
In this past third of a century, government has passed more laws,
spent more money, initiated more programs, than in all our
previous history.
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