30+ Memorable and Famous Inauguration Quotes

Famous Inauguration Quotes – There are several presidents with memorable quotes from different speeches. Some of their most memorable lines are from their inauguration speech. Out of several inaugration speeches from different presidents, some of the most famous lines are from American presidents. American presidents are known to have given very inspiring speeches in different time periods. Among the many inaguration speeches from American presidents, here are some of the most Famous Inauguration Quotes:

• “Ask not what your country can do for you but what you can do for your country.”
  – John F. Kennedy, 1961
  
• “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
  
• “Your dreams, your hopes, your goals are going to be the dreams, the hopes, and the goals of this administration, so help me God.”
  – Ronald Reagan, 1981
  
• “The American people await action. They didn’t send us here to bicker. They ask us to rise above the merely partisan.”
  – George H.W. Bush, 1989
  
• “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,1865
  
• “And since the preservation of the sacred fire of liberty, and the destiny of the Republican model of Government, are justly considered as deeply, perhaps as finally staked, on the experiment entrusted to the hands of the American people.”
  – George Washington, 1789
  
• “This great Nation will endure as it has endured, will revive and will prosper. So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself—nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.”
  – Franklin Delano Roosevelt, 1933
  
• “Starting today, we must pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and begin again the work of remaking America.”
  – Barack Obama, 2009
  
• “The American dream endures. We must once again have full faith in our country — and in one another. I believe America can be better. We can be even stronger than before.”
  – Jimmy Carter, 1977
  
• “There is nothing wrong with America that cannot be cured by what is right with America.”
  – Bill Clinton,1993
  
• “Justice requires us to remember that when any citizen denies his fellow, saying, ‘His color is not mine,’ or ‘His beliefs are strange and different,’ in that moment he betrays America, though his forebears created this nation.”
  – Lyndon Baines Johnson, 1965
  
• “Old truths have been relearned; untruths have been unlearned. We have always known that heedless self-interest was bad morals; we know now that it is bad economics.”
  – Franklin Delano Roosevelt, 1937
  
• “In these difficult years, America has suffered from a fever of words; from inflated rhetoric that promises more than it can deliver; from angry rhetoric that fans discontents into hatreds; from bombastic rhetoric that postures instead of persuading. We cannot learn from one another until we stop shouting at one another–until we speak quietly enough so that our words can be heard as well as our voices.”
  – Richard Nixon, 1969
  
• My friends, we are not the sum of our possessions. They are not the measure of our lives. In our hearts we know what matters. We cannot hope only to leave our children a bigger car, a bigger bank account. We must hope to give them a sense of what it means to be a loyal friend, a loving parent, a citizen who leaves his home, his neighborhood and town better than he found it. What do we want the men and women who work with us to say when we are no longer there? That we were more driven to succeed than anyone around us? Or that we stopped to ask if a sick child had gotten better, and stayed a moment there to trade a word of friendship?
  – George Bush, 1989
  
• “This is America’s day. This is democracy’s day. A day of history and hope, of renewal and resolve. Through a crucible for the ages, America has been tested anew and America has risen to the challenge. Today we celebrate the triumph not of a candidate but of a cause, a cause of democracy. The people – the will of the people – has been heard, and the will of the people has been heeded.”
  – Joe Biden, 2021

More Famous Inauguration Quotes

• How incredible it is that in this fragile existence, we should hate and destroy one another. There are possibilities enough for all who will abandon mastery over others to pursue mastery over nature. There is world enough for all to seek their happiness in their own way.
  – Lyndon Baines Johnson, 1965
  
• “In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem.”
  – Ronald Reagan, 1981
  
• “And so, my fellow Americans, we must be strong, for there is much to dare. The demands of our time are great, and they are different. Let us meet them with faith and courage, with patience and a grateful, happy heart.”
  – Bill Clinton, 1997
  
• “America is never wholly herself unless she is engaged in high moral principle. We as a people have such a purpose today. It is to make kinder the face of the nation and gentler the face of the world.”
  – George Bush, 1989
  
• “History is a ribbon, always unfurling; history is a journey. And as we continue our journey, we think of those who traveled before us. We stand together again at the steps of this symbol of our democracy–or we would have been standing at the steps if it hadn’t gotten so cold.”
  – Ronald Reagan, 1985
  
• “But every difference of opinion is not a difference of principle. We have called by different names brethren of the same principle. We are all Republicans, we are all Federalists. If there be any among us who would wish to dissolve this Union or to change its republican form, let them stand undisturbed as monuments of the safety with which error of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left free to combat it.”
  – Thomas Jefferson, 1801
  
• “You have given me a great responsibility–to stay close to you, to be worthy of you, and to exemplify what you are. Let us create together a new national spirit of unity and trust. Your strength can compensate for my weakness, and your wisdom can help to minimize my mistakes.”
  – Jimmy Carter, 1977
  
• “Much has been given us, and much will rightfully be expected from us. We have duties to others and duties to ourselves; and we can shirk neither.”
  – Theodore Roosevelt, 1905
  
• “But we have always understood that when times change, so must we; that fidelity to our founding principles requires new responses to new challenges; that preserving our individual freedoms ultimately requires collective action.”
  – Barack Obama, 2013
  
• “We are provincials no longer. The tragic events of the 30 months of vital turmoil through which we have just passed have made us citizens of the world. There can be no turning back.”
  – Woodrow Wilson 1917
  
• “We are led, by events and common sense, to one conclusion: The survival of liberty in our land increasingly depends on the success of liberty in other lands. The best hope for peace in our world is the expansion of freedom in all the world.”
  – George H.W. Bush, 2005
  
• “As times change, so government must change. We need a new government for a new century – humble enough not to try to solve all our problems for us, but strong enough to give us the tools to solve our problems for ourselves; a government that is smaller, lives within its means, and does more with less. Yet where it can stand up for our values and interests in the world, and where it can give Americans the power to make a real difference in their everyday lives, government should do more, not less. The preeminent mission of our new government is to give all Americans an opportunity,- not a guarantee, but a real opportunity to build better lives.”
  – Bill Clinton, 1997

Inspiring Lines From Amanda Gorman’s Inauguration Poem

• “We will not march back to what was, but move to what shall be: a country that is bruised but whole, benevolent but bold, fierce and free.”
  
• “There is always light. If only we’re brave enough to see it. If only we’re brave enough to be it.”
  
• “We did not feel prepared to be the heirs of such a terrifying hour. But within it we found the power to author a new chapter, To offer hope and laughter to ourselves”
  
• “We are striving to forge our union with purpose. To compose a country committed to all cultures, colors, characters and conditions of man. And so we lift our gaze, not to what stands between us, but what stands before us.”
  
• “If we merge mercy with might and might with right, then love becomes our legacy and change our children’s birthright.”

If you found inspiration from these quotes, you may like our “Zelensky Quotes About War” and “Zelensky Quotes About Ukraine.”