But let us, above all, recognize a fundamental truth. We can be the best clothed, best fed, best housed people in the world, enjoying clean air, clean water, beautiful parks, but we could still be the unhappiest people in the world without an indefinable spirit--the lift of a driving dream which has made America, from its beginning, the hope of the world.
Two hundred years ago this was a new nation of 3 million people, weak militarily, poor economically. But America meant something to the world then which could not be measured in dollars, something far more important than military might.
Listen to President Thomas Jefferson in 1802: We act not “for ourselves alone, but for the whole human race.”
We had a spiritual quality then which caught the imagination of millions of people in the world.
Today, when we are the richest and strongest nation in the world, let it not be recorded that we lack the moral and spiritual idealism which made us the hope of the world at the time of our birth.
The demands of us in 1976 are even greater than in 1776.
It is no longer enough to live and let live. Now we must live and help live.
We need a fresh climate in America, one in which a person can breathe freely and breathe in freedom.
Our recognition of the truth that wealth and happiness are not the same thing requires us to measure success or failure by new criteria.
Even more than the programs I have described today, what this Nation needs is an example from its elected leaders in providing the spiritual and moral leadership which no programs for material progress can satisfy.