Progress, however, will be realized only as it is more than matched by a continuing growth in the spiritual strength of the nation.  Our dedication to moral values must be complete in our dealings abroad and in our relationships among ourselves.  We have single-minded devotion to the common good of America.  Never must we forget that this means the well-being, the prosperity, the security of all Americans in every walk of life.

To the attainment of these objectives, I pledge full energies of the Administration, as in the Session ahead, it works on a program for submission to you, the Congress of the United States.

***

State of the Union Address
Dwight D. Eisenhower
January 10, 1957

To the Congress of the United States: 

I appear before the Congress today to report on the State of the Union and the relationships of the Union to the other nations of the world.  I come here, firmly convinced that at no time in the history of the Republic have circumstances more emphatically underscored the need, in all echelons of government, for vision and wisdom and resolution.

You meet in a season of stress that is testing the fitness of political systems and the validity of political philosophies.  Each stress stems in part from causes peculiar to itself.  But every stress is a reflection of a universal phenomenon.

In the world today, the surging and understandable tide of nationalism is marked by widespread revulsion and revolt against tyranny, injustice, inequality and poverty.  As individuals, joined in a common hunger for freedom, men and women and even children pit their spirit against guns and tanks.  On a larger scale, in an ever more persistent search for the self-respect of authentic sovereignty and the economic base on which national independence must rest, peoples sever old ties; seek new alliances; experiment—­sometimes dangerously—­in their struggle to satisfy these human aspirations.

Particularly, in the past year, this tide has changed the pattern of attitudes and thinking among millions.  The changes already accomplished foreshadow a world transformed by the spirit of freedom.  This is no faint and pious hope.  The forces now at work in the minds and hearts of men will not be spent through many years.  In the main, today’s expressions of nationalism are, in spirit, echoes of our forefathers’ struggle for independence.

This Republic cannot be aloof to these events heralding a new epoch in the affairs of mankind.

Our pledged word, our enlightened self-interest, our character as a Nation commit us to a high role in world affairs:  a role of vigorous leadership, ready strength, sympathetic understanding.

The State of the Union, at the opening of the 85th Congress continues to vindicate the wisdom of the principles on which this Republic is rounded.  Proclaimed in the Constitution of the Nation and in many of our historic documents, and rounded in devout religious convictions, these principles enunciate: