I Cannot Imagine That I

The Kind Of Hope That I Often Think About…i Understand Above All As A State Of Mind, Not A State Of The World. Either We Have Hope Within Us, Or We Don’t. It Is A Dimension Of The Soul It’s Not Essentially Dependent Upon Some Particular Observation Of The World Or Estimate Of The Situation. Hope Is Not The Conviction That Something Will Turn Out Well, But The Certainty That Something Makes Sense, Regardless Of How It Turns Out.

The Idea Of Human Rights And Freedoms Must Be An Integral Part Of Any Meaningful World Order. Yet, I Think It Must Be Anchored In A Different Place, And In A Different Way, Than Has Been The Case So Far. If It Is To Be More Than Just A Slogan Mocked By Half The World, It Cannot Be Expressed In The Language Of A Departing Era, And It Must Not Be Mere Froth Floating On The Subsiding Waters Of Faith In A Purely Scientific Relationship To The World.

The Exercise Of Power Is Determined By Thousands Of Interactions Between The World Of The Powerful And That Of The Powerless, All The More So Because These Worlds Are Never Divided By A Sharp Line: Everyone Has A Small Part Of Himself In Both.

The Previous Regime ... Reduced Man To A Means Of Production And Nature To A Tool Of Production. Thus It Attacked Both Their Very Essence And Their Mutual Relationship. It Reduced Gifted And Autonomous People To Nuts And Bolts In Some Monstrously Huge, Noisy, And Stinking Machine.

My Dear Fellow Citizens: For Forty Years You Have Heard From My Predecessors On This Day Different Variations Of The Same Theme: How Our Country Flourished, How Many Millions Of Tons Of Steel We Produced, How Happy We All Were, How We Trusted Our Government, And What Bright Perspectives Were Unfolding In Front Of Us. I Assume You Did Not Propose Me For This Office So That I, Too, Would Lie To You.