HISTORIC SPEECHES
DWIGHT EISENHOWER
Farewell
Address
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.
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.
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 State house, 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.
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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