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DWIGHT D. EISENHOWER BROADCASTING
FROM THE PRESIDENT'S OFFICE
Eisenhower's Farewell Address
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Dwight D. Eisenhower.
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Dwight D. Eisenhower's Farewell
Address.
Here is the full video clip of Eisenhower's Farewell
Address. Text transcript below.
It follows the full text transcript of
Dwight D. Eisenhower's Farewell Address, delivered at
the President's Office, Washington D.C. - January 17, 1961.
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My fellow
Americans: |
Three days from
now, after half a century in the service of our
country, I shall lay down the responsibilities
of office as, in traditional and solemn
ceremony, the authority of the Presidency is
vested in my successor.
This evening I come to you with a message of
leave-taking and farewell, and to share a few
final thoughts with you, my countrymen.
Like every other citizen, I wish the new
President, and all who will labor with him,
Godspeed. I pray that the coming years will be
blessed with peace and prosperity for all.
Our people expect their President and the
Congress to find essential agreement on issues
of great moment, the wise resolution of which
will better shape the future of the Nation.
My own relations with the Congress, which began
on a remote and tenuous basis when, long ago, a
member of the Senate appointed me to West Point,
have since ranged to the intimate during the war
and immediate post-war period, and, finally, to
the mutually interdependent during these past
eight years.
In this final relationship, the Congress and the
Administration have, on most vital issues,
cooperated well, to serve the national good
rather than mere partisanship, and so have
assured that the business of the Nation should
go forward. So, my official relationship with
the Congress ends in a feeling, on my part, of
gratitude that we have been able to do so much
together.
II
We now stand ten years past the midpoint of a
century that has witnessed four major wars among
great nations. Three of these involved our own
country. Despite these holocausts America is
today the strongest, the most influential and
most productive nation in the world.
Understandably proud of this pre-eminence, we
yet realize that America's leadership and
prestige depend, not merely upon our unmatched
material progress, riches and military strength,
but on how we use our power in the interests of
world peace and human betterment.
III
Throughout America's adventure in free
government, our basic purposes have been to keep
the peace; to foster progress in human
achievement, and to enhance liberty, dignity and
integrity among people and among nations. To
strive for less would be unworthy of a free and
religious people. Any failure traceable to
arrogance, or our lack of comprehension or
readiness to sacrifice would inflict upon us
grievous hurt both at home and abroad.
Progress toward these noble goals is
persistently threatened by the conflict now
engulfing the world. It commands our whole
attention, absorbs our very beings. We face a
hostile ideology-global in scope, atheistic in
character, ruthless in purpose, and insidious in
method. Unhappily the danger it poses promises
to be of indefinite duration. To meet it
successfully, there is called for, not so much
the emotional and transitory sacrifices of
crisis, but rather those which enable us to
carry forward steadily, surely, and without
complaint the burdens of a prolonged and complex
struggle-with liberty at stake. Only thus shall
we remain, despite every provocation, on our
charted course toward permanent peace and human
betterment.
Crises there will continue to be. In meeting
them, whether foreign or domestic, great or
small, there is a recurring temptation to feel
that some spectacular and costly action could
become the miraculous solution to all current
difficulties. A huge increase in newer elements
of our defense; development of unrealistic
programs to cure every ill in agriculture; a
dramatic expansion in basic and applied
research-these and many other possibilities,
each possibly promising in itself, may be
suggested as the only way to the road we which
to travel.
But each proposal must be weighed in the light
of a broader consideration: the need to maintain
balance in and among national programs-balance
between the private and the public economy,
balance between cost and hoped for
advantage-balance between the clearly necessary
and the comfortably desirable; balance between
our essential requirements as a nation and the
duties imposed by the nation upon the
individual; balance between action of the moment
and the national welfare of the future. Good
judgment seeks balance and progress; lack of it
eventually finds imbalance and frustration.
The record of many decades stands as proof that
our people and their government have, in the
main, understood these truths and have responded
to them well, in the face of stress and threat.
But threats, new in kind or degree, constantly
arise. I mention two only.
IV
A vital element in keeping the peace is our
military establishment. Our arms must be mighty,
ready for instant action, so that no potential
aggressor may be tempted to risk his own
destruction.
Our military organization today bears little
relation to that known by any of my predecessors
in peace time, or indeed by the fighting men of
World War II or Korea.
Until the latest of our world conflicts, the
United States had no armaments industry.
American makers of plowshares could, with time
and as required, make swords as well. But now we
can no longer risk emergency improvisation of
national defense; we have been compelled to
create a permanent armaments industry of vast
proportions. Added to this, three and a half
million men and women are directly engaged in
the defense establishment. We annually spend on
military security more than the net income of
all United State corporations.
This conjunction of an immense military
establishment and a large arms industry is new
in the American experience. The total
influence-economic, political, even spiritual-is
felt in every city, every state house, every
office of the Federal government. We recognize
the imperative need for this development. Yet we
must not fail to comprehend its grave
implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood
are all involved; so is the very structure of
our society.
In the councils of government, we must guard
against the acquisition of unwarranted
influence, whether sought or unsought, by the
military-industrial complex. The potential for
the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists
and will persist.
We must never let the weight of this combination
endanger our liberties or democratic processes.
We should take nothing for granted only an alert
and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the
proper meshing of huge industrial and military
machinery of defense with our peaceful methods
and goals, so that security and liberty may
prosper together.
Akin to, and largely responsible for the
sweeping changes in our industrial-military
posture, has been the technological revolution
during recent decades.
In this revolution, research has become central;
it also becomes more formalized, complex, and
costly. A steadily increasing share is conducted
for, by, or at the direction of, the Federal
government.
Today, the solitary inventor, tinkering in his
shop, has been over shadowed by task forces of
scientists in laboratories and testing fields.
In the same fashion, the free university,
historically the fountainhead of free ideas and
scientific discovery, has experienced a
revolution in the conduct of research. Partly
because of the huge costs involved, a government
contract becomes virtually a substitute for
intellectual curiosity. For every old blackboard
there are now hundreds of new electronic
computers.
The prospect of domination of the nation's
scholars by Federal employment, project
allocations, and the power of money is ever
present and is gravely to be regarded.
Yet, in holding scientific research and
discovery in respect, as we should, we must also
be alert to the equal and opposite danger that
public policy could itself become the captive of
a scientific-technological elite.
It is the task of statesmanship to mold, to
balance, and to integrate these and other
forces, new and old, within the principles of
our democratic system-ever aiming toward the
supreme goals of our free society.
V
Another factor in maintaining balance involves
the element of time. As we peer into society's
future, we-you and I, and our government-must
avoid the impulse to live only for today,
plundering, for our own ease and convenience,
the precious resources of tomorrow. We cannot
mortgage the material assets of our
grandchildren without risking the loss also of
their political and spiritual heritage. We want
democracy to survive for all generations to
come, not to become the insolvent phantom of
tomorrow.
VI
Down the long lane of the history yet to be
written America knows that this world of ours,
ever growing smaller, must avoid becoming a
community of dreadful fear and hate, and be,
instead, a proud confederation of mutual trust
and respect.
Such a confederation must be one of equals. The
weakest must come to the conference table with
the same confidence as do we, protected as we
are by our moral, economic, and military
strength. That table, though scarred by many
past frustrations, cannot be abandoned for the
certain agony of the battlefield.
Disarmament, with mutual honor and confidence,
is a continuing imperative. Together we must
learn how to compose difference, not with arms,
but with intellect and decent purpose. Because
this need is so sharp and apparent I confess
that I lay down my official responsibilities in
this field with a definite sense of
disappointment. As one who has witnessed the
horror and the lingering sadness of war-as one
who knows that another war could utterly destroy
this civilization which has been so slowly and
painfully built over thousands of years-I wish I
could say tonight that a lasting peace is in
sight.
Happily, I can say that war has been avoided.
Steady progress toward our ultimate goal has
been made. But, so much remains to be done. As a
private citizen, I shall never cease to do what
little I can to help the world advance along
that road.
VII
So-in this my last good night to you as your
President-I thank you for the many opportunities
you have given me for public service in war and
peace. I trust that in that service you find
some things worthy; as for the rest of it, I know
you will find ways to improve performance in the
future.
You and I-my fellow citizens-need to be strong
in our faith that all nations, under God, will
reach the goal of peace with justice. May we be
ever unswerving in devotion to principle,
confident but humble with power, diligent in
pursuit of the Nation's great goals.
To all the peoples of the world, I once more
give expression to America's prayerful and
continuing inspiration:
We pray that peoples of all faiths, all races,
all nations, may have their great human needs
satisfied; that those now denied opportunity
shall come to enjoy it to the full; that all who
yearn for freedom may experience its spiritual
blessings; that those who have freedom will
understand, also, its heavy responsibilities;
that all who are insensitive to the needs of
others will learn charity; that the scourges of
poverty, disease and ignorance will be made to
disappear from the earth, and that, in the
goodness of time, all peoples will come to live
together in a peace guaranteed by the binding
force of mutual respect and love.
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