India, April 19 -- So used have we become to the current standard of comments, posts and speeches emanating from the White House that we forget the great thoughts and words that have come from previous occupants of that august residence of the US president. Heading this list is the all-time great Gettysburg Address of Abraham Lincoln (1863) and, less known but no less moving, his Second Inaugural. Lincoln said at the end of that very brief address, "With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation's wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow, and his orphan - to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves, and with all nations." Does America recall those words which apply today to the wounds of battle, the widow and the orphan the ongoing war has created, in all the nations afflicted by the conflict? I am sure much of America does. And then there is Franklin D Roosevelt's First Inaugural of 1933, a very different speech from Lincoln's 70 years earlier, but still endowed with an ethical vision. FDR said, "I would dedicate this nation to the policy of the good neighbour - the neighbour who resolutely respects himself and, because he does so, respects the rights of others - the neighbour who respects his obligations and respects the sanctity of his agreements in and with a world of neighbours." John F Kennedy's Inaugural Address is made of ideas and words we can hardly believe came from where they did. Every paragraph of that speech crafted by Kennedy is of epic voltage. I will cite three of them. "To those nations who would make themselves our adversary, we offer not a pledge but a request: that both sides begin anew the quest for peace, before the dark powers of destruction unleashed by science engulf all humanity in planned or accidental self-destruction." "Let both sides, for the first time, formulate serious and precise proposals for the inspection and control of arms - and bring the absolute power to destroy other nations under the absolute control of all nations." "Let both sides seek to invoke the wonders of science instead of its terrors. Together let us explore the stars, conquer the deserts, eradicate disease, tap the ocean depths and encourage the arts and commerce." In 2008, on the night of his election, another transformational president, Barack Obama, said something no one who has heard or read it can ever forget: "To those - to those who would tear the world down: We will defeat you. To those who seek peace and security: We support you. And to all those who have wondered if America's beacon still burns as bright: Tonight we proved once more that the true strength of our nation comes not from the might of our arms or the scale of our wealth, but from the enduring power of our ideals: democracy, liberty, opportunity and unyielding hope." But far more important than that famous inaugural speech, far more crucial to humanity as a whole, is the one he made, as president of the country that had blown Hiroshima and Nagasaki into smithereens, from right there. Standing at the site Obama said, evoking Oppenheimer's famous reference to the Bhagavad Gita: "Seventy-one years ago, on a bright, cloudless morning, death fell from the sky and the world was changed. A flash of light and a wall of fire destroyed a city and demonstrated that mankind possessed the means to destroy itself. Why do we come to this place, to Hiroshima? We come to ponder a terrible force unleashed in a not so distant past. We come to mourn the dead, including over 100,000 Japanese men, women and children; thousands of Koreans; a dozen Americans held prisoner. Their souls speak to us. They ask us to look inward, to take stock of who we are and what we might become . There are many sites around the world that chronicle this war - memorials that tell stories of courage and heroism; graves and empty camps that echo of unspeakable depravity. Yet in the image of a mushroom cloud that rose into these skies, we are most starkly reminded of humanity's core contradiction; how the very spark that marks us as a species - our thoughts, our imagination, our language, our tool-making, our ability to set ourselves apart from nature and bend it to our will - those very things also give us the capacity for unmatched destruction. Science allows us to communicate across the seas and fly above the clouds; to cure disease and understand the cosmos. But those same discoveries can be turned into ever-more efficient killing machines. The wars of the modern age teach this truth. Hiroshima teaches this truth. Technological progress without an equivalent progress in human institutions can doom us. The scientific revolution that led to the splitting of an atom requires a moral revolution, as well. That is why we come to this place. We stand here, in the middle of this city, and force ourselves to imagine the moment the bomb fell. We force ourselves to feel the dread of children confused by what they see. We listen to a silent cry. We remember all the innocents killed across the arc of that terrible war, and the wars that came before, and the wars that would follow." When the world despairs about what Washington DC and Tel Aviv have done in these fiery times, it should remember that the capital of the world's most powerful nation has spelt war but also scripted humanity's quest for peace. I will conclude with another great moment in Washington DC. On August 28, 1963, the centenary year of the Gettysburg address, while delivering his now-famous speech at the Lincoln Memorial in DC from a prepared text, Martin Luther King Jr. paused after the seventh paragraph, perhaps to take a breath. During that pause, his friend the iconic Gospel singer Mahalia Jackson, said loud enough for him (and some others present near the dais like Ted Kennedy) to hear: "Tell them about the dream, Martin!". From that moment on, King's eyes did not return to the pages in front of him. He ad-libbed, saying the immortal words "I have a dream.". In his book Behind the Dream, King's speechwriter Clarence B Jones, who had helped draft the prepared text, describes the moment. He says King "pushed the text of his prepared remarks to one side of the lectern, shifted gears in a heartbeat, abandoning whatever final version he'd prepared.He'd given himself over to the spirit of the moment." To Mahalia Jackson' inspired intervention, I dedicate this column in hope, prayer and faith....