Well, they were restless, of course, and they had to be moving on. But there was more than that. There was a dream--a dream of a place where a free man could build for himself, and raise his children to a better life--a dream of a continent to be conquered, a world to be won, a nation to be made.
Remembering this, I knew the answer.
A President does not shape a new and personal vision of America.
He collects it from the scattered hopes of the American past.
It existed when the first settlers saw the coast of a new world, and when the first pioneers moved westward.
It has guided us every step of the way.
It sustains every President. But it is also your inheritance and it belongs equally to all the people that we all serve.
It must be interpreted anew by each generation for its own needs; as I have tried, in part, to do tonight.
It shall lead us as we enter the third century of the search for a more perfect union?
This, then, is the state of the Union: Free and restless, growing and full of hope.