Now, it is time to leave. I hope it may be said, a hundred years from now, that by working together we helped to make our country more just, more just for all of its people, as well as to insure and guarantee the blessings of liberty for all of our posterity.
That is what I hope. But I believe that at least it will be said that we tried.
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State of the Union Address
Richard Nixon
January 22, 1970
Mr. Speaker, Mr. President, my colleagues in the Congress, our distinguished guests and my fellow Americans:
To address a joint session of the Congress in this great Chamber in which I was once privileged to serve is an honor for which I am deeply grateful.
The State of the Union Address is traditionally an occasion for a lengthy and detailed account by the President of what he has accomplished in the past, what he wants the Congress to do in the future, and, in an election year, to lay the basis for the political issues which might be decisive in the fall.
Occasionally there comes a time when profound and far-reaching events command a break with tradition. This is such a time.
I say this not only because 1970 marks the beginning of a new decade in which America will celebrate its 200th birthday. I say it because new knowledge and hard experience argue persuasively that both our programs and our institutions in America need to be reformed.
The moment has arrived to harness the vast energies and abundance of this land to the creation of a new American experience, an experience richer and deeper and more truly a reflection of the goodness and grace of the human spirit.