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Farewell Address to The Nation
January 17, 1961
Good evening, my fellow Americans:
First, I should like to express my gratitude to the radio and television networks for the opportunity they have given me over the years to bring reports and messages to our nation.
My special thanks go to them for the opportunity of addressing you this evening.
Three days from now, after a half century of 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 questions of great moment, the wise resolution of which will better shape the
future of the nation.
My own relations with 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 nation well rather than mere
partisanship, and so have assured that the business of the nation should go
forward. So my official relationship with Congress ends in a feeling on my part,
of gratitude that we have been able to do so much together.
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.
Throughout America's adventure in free government, such basic purposes have been
to keep the peace; to foster progress in human achievement, and to enhance
liberty, dignity and integrity among peoples 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 a 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 the 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 the newer elements of our defenses; 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 wish to travel.
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.
But each proposal must be weighed in 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 the cost and hoped for advantages - 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 the actions 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 threat and stress.
But threats, new in kind or degree, constantly arise.
Of these, I mention two only.
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 peacetime, 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 States corporations.
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.
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 Statehouse, 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 the 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 overshadowed 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. 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.
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.
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, for our own ease and
convenience, the precious resources of tomorrow.
We cannot mortgage the material
assets of our grandchildren without asking 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.
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 differences, 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.
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 Nations' great goals.
To all the peoples of the world, I once more give expression to America's
prayerful and continuing aspiration:
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.
Now, on Friday noon, I am to become a private citizen.
I am proud to do so. I
look forward to it.
Thank you, and good night.
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