I want this administration to be recognized as one in which we finally achieve full and equal opportunity for persons of every race, color, creed, and nationality.

I asked you to come here today for a very special purpose.

These and a host of other actions are open to us.

With your leadership and with your personal commitment to this objective, I have high confidence and great hope that we can build a government where talent and energy and integrity will prevail and where discrimination will not.

So I challenge each of you here today, and each of you within the sound of my voice, to try to accept this as your own creed.

As long as any American is denied the chance to fully develop and to use his talents, to become all that he can be, then every American is less than he should be.

A Negro scholar and exceptional administrator for the first time sits in the President's Cabinet.

Able Negro lady is a United States Federal judge.

I intend to do everything I can to see that the goal is finally reached.

Too many of our fellow citizens do not get the education or the training that they need to become productive members of our society.

I want to talk to you about a goal of this Government that is very close to my heart.

If we are going to have equal employment opportunity in the Federal Government, we must attack that problem on many fronts.

It is more than doing what is needed. It is doing what it right.

A most charming and intelligent lady is our first woman to be both an Ambassador and a Negro.

It is not enough just to open the gates of opportunity.

If our magnificent young men can die for freedom in a foreign land, how can we refuse any of them a full measure of freedom and opportunity here at home?

If race, skin color, religious beliefs, sex, or national origin prevent anyone from reaching the heights, then we have all wasted a human being.

It is more than doing what is needed. It is doing what is right.

These new regulations call upon you to undertake action programs.

Rivers can be tamed.

I believe that those who make that case are no less patriotic and no less sincere than those who believe that we cannot shorten the length of our reach into the world.

This is a moment in which history and hope meet and move on from here as partners.

First, for the Asian leaders, who conceived and organized the bank and who are so ably represented here today by the Ambassadors from their countries.

So today we have come here to the historic East Room of the White House and gathered at this place to start a journey together.

For the United States it is our first major commitment under our promise to expand economic and social development in Southeast Asia.