President John F. Kennedy’s remarks at the 9^th annual Presidential Prayer Breakfast held in Washington, D.C., on February 9, 1961. 

No man who enters upon the office to which I have succeeded can fail to recognize how every president of the United States has placed special reliance upon his faith in God…While they came from a variety of religious backgrounds and held a wide variety of religious beliefs, each of our presidents in his own way has placed a special trust in God.  Those who were the strongest intellectually were also the strongest spiritually.

Today our nation is passing through another time of trial.  In many ways, our dangers and our problems are far greater – and certainly infinitely more complex….  It is an ironic fact that in this nuclear age, when the horizon of human knowledge and human experience has passed far beyond any that any age has ever known, that we turn back at this time to the oldest source of wisdom and strength, to the words of the prophets and the saints, who tell us that faith is more powerful than doubt, that hope is more potent than despair, and that only through the love that is sometimes called charity can we conquer those forces within ourselves and throughout all the world that threaten the very existence of mankind.

 Keeping in mind that ‘when a man’s ways please the Lord, he maketh even his enemies to be at peace with him,’ let us go forth to lead this land that we love, joining in the prayer of General George Washington in 1783, ‘that God would have you in the His holy protection, that He would incline the hearts of the citizens…to entertain a brotherly love and affection one for another…and finally that He would most graciously be pleased to dispose us all to do justice, to love mercy, and to demean ourselves with…the characteristics of the Divine Author of our blessed religion, without an humble invitation of whose example we can never hope to be a happy nation.’   The guiding principle and prayer of this Nation has been, is now, and ever shall be ‘In God We Trust.’”