John F. Kennedy: Inaugural Address

Only rarely do speeches reverberate through the decades, remaining as fresh and hopeful as has U.S. President John F. Kennedy’s Inaugural Address, delivered January 20, 1961. Kennedy's Inaugural Address is as laden with quotable lines as Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address and the wartime speeches of British prime minister Winston Churchill. Each year Kennedy's address is included in more than twenty anthologies; it is one of the most quoted inaugural addresses. Since Kennedy's inauguration as the nation's thirty-fifth president, the speech has served as a comparative standard for subsequent inaugural speeches.

As was typical with Kennedy, he called upon numerous advisers to provide ideas for the address. Shortly after his election, Kennedy was already deciding on certain parameters for the speech: It was to remain short, focus on foreign affairs, and demonstrate a strong stance against the Soviet Union. In fact, at the start of the twenty-first century, Kennedy's Inaugural Address was the fourth-shortest inaugural address in American history. Kennedy's first words as president were a succinct call to Americans to help achieve the New Frontier and other political proposals through sacrifice and service and to take up the “burdens” of freedom.