Top 10 US inaugural quotes
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US President George W Bush at his 2005 inauguration. (Reuters)
As United States President-elect Barack Obama prepares to take the oath of office and address his nation, here are 10 of the most famous quotes from past US inaugural speeches:
1. "With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations."
- Abraham Lincoln's second inaugural address, 1865
2. "Let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself - nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyses needed efforts to convert retreat into advance."
- Franklin D Roosevelt, 1933
3. "My fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country. My fellow citizens of the world, ask not what America will do for you, but what, together, we can do for the freedom of man."
- John F Kennedy, 1961
4. "The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature."
- Lincoln's first inaugural, 1861
5. "In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem."
- Ronald Reagan, 1981
6. "There is nothing wrong with America that cannot be cured by what is right with America."
- Bill Clinton, 1993
7. "My fellow Americans, our long national nightmare is over."
- Gerald Ford, 1974, on succeeding the disgraced Richard Nixon
8. "Peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations, entangling alliances with none."
- Thomas Jefferson, 1801
9. "We wish peace, but we wish the peace of justice, the peace of righteousness. We wish it because we think it is right and not because we are afraid."
- Theodore Roosevelt, 1905, as America rose to global might
10. "So it is the policy of the United States to seek and support the growth of democratic movements and institutions in every nation and culture, with the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in our world."
- George W Bush, 2005
-Reuters
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