We want to create a society in which our workers and farmers can afford to appear in handsome attire and enjoy a good life and health; we want this kind of society.

Next we must move to enlarge the horizons of all Americans, and this effort is what we will pursue in the Great Society. It is founded upon the idea that the ultimate test of any society is really the quality of the men and women that it produces, and the quality of the life that they are permitted to lead. These goals can never be measured in guns or statistics. They do not flow automatically from wealth or power. They must be made a careful, conscious objective, and they must be pursued with dedication and labor. And that we intend to do. Even the greatest of past societies were founded upon the exploitation and the misery of many. So we in beautiful America can be the first to enrich the quality of the life of all of our people. We do not make money just to build factories. Yes, we have the tools to do such a job. We make money to make it possible to enrich the lives of human beings. We are the richest and we are the most powerful nation on earth. Our knowledge and our insight into our own problems are growing daily. And now I believe today we can see our real goal. That goal is not an idle dream. And it is not a vague Utopia. It has concrete goals and it requires specific programs. Even as we meet here today, some of those programs are being prepared for my review. The one I just announced I reviewed on the helicopter coming down here this morning. These programs will attack the problems of making our cities a decent place to live in. They will seek to preserve the beauty of our land. They will strive to make it possible for every child born in this country to receive an education of the highest quality, to the full limit of his ability, no matter how poor he is, no matter where he lives, no matter which side of the tracks he was born on. It will do all these things and more, much more. It will not be a program for a hundred days or even a program for the next 4 years. It will point toward the year 2000. But it will provide the base on which America moves forward and builds.

We aim to develop as a nation where healthy, educated people will live without poverty ... building a democratic country that is environmentally friendly, is connected to international financial networks, has a competitive economy and respects human rights.

A healthy, creative, open, growing, learning society will spontaneously create and develop the types of individual that the society needs. It will make development to economic and social adjustments all the more easy and natural. It will allow those of us in the private sector as well as government and civil society to correspond with each other and meet the needs of society in a positive way.

As we look again to rebuild a rich country, we must make sure this time round we also build a rich society - a society where the measure of wealth is not only the money in our pockets but the wellbeing of our communities.

We need to build a more prosperous world, in which poverty is excluded and development is axiomatic. We need to build a safer world, in which terror is defeated, deadly weapons do not fall into the wrong hands and technology is used for the betterment of human life. We need to build a just world that does not turn a blind eye to the plight and suffering of its inhabitants, but ensures that rules are respected and rights are enjoyed. We need a world of larger freedom and greater dignity.

Every society is built upon competition and cooperation.

A good society maximizes positive-sum competition and voluntary cooperation.

We want to build a new society, a free society where all men are equal, a society where industry, thrift, integrity and uprightness prevail hence we must wipe out all bad habits of the old society.

We want to ensure a multilateral development of society, the thriving of all sides of social life, economy, science and culture, the improvement of management, the moulding of the new man and the promotion of socialist ethics and equity.

We want to achieve a new and better order of society: in this new and better society there must be neither rich nor poor; all will have to work. Not a handful of rich people, but all the working people must enjoy the fruits of their common labour. Machines and other improvements must serve to ease the work of all and not to enable a few to grow rich at the expense of millions and tens of millions of people. This new and better society is called socialist society. The teachings about this society are called socialism.

It is about much more than the constitution. It is about how we create the vibrant economy, the healthy society and the socially and environmentally just society in which we - all of us - believe.

Growth and prosperity. These are the blocks with which we must build our welfare society.

Your imagination, your initiative, and your indignation will determine whether we build a society where progress is the servant of our needs, or a society where old values and new visions are buried under unbridled growth. For in your time we have the opportunity to move not only toward the rich society and the powerful society, but upward to the Great Society. The Great Society rests on abundance and liberty for all. It demands an end to poverty and racial injustice, to which we are totally committed in our time. But that is just the beginning.

Improve working conditions, render to labor what is justly due to labor, and thereby give the people security, comfort, and leisure Then, believe me, they will educate themselves; they will create a larger, saner, higher civilization than this.