"We will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment..."

The journey will be difficult. The road will be long. I face this challenge with profound humility, and knowledge of my own limitations. But I also face it with limitless faith in the capacity of the American people. Because if we are willing to work for it, and fight for it, and believe in it, then I am absolutely certain that generations from now, we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment when we began to provide care for the sick and good jobs to the jobless; this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal; this was the moment when we ended a war and secured our nation and restored our image as the last, best hope on Earth. This was the moment – this was the time – when we came together to remake this great nation so that it may always reflect our very best selves, and our highest ideals. Thank you, God Bless you, and may God Bless the United States of America.

Sorensen was President Kennedy's Special Counsel & Adviser, and primary speechwriter, the role for which he is best remembered today. His inaugural address for the new president exhorted listeners to "Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country". This call to service is the phrase still most closely associated with the Kennedy administration today. Although Sorensen played an important part in the composition of the Inaugural Address, the famous turn of phrase that everyone remembers from that speech was actually written by Kennedy himself, and taken from Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. This has been acknowledged by Sorensen as well as documented in several substantive biographies of JFK, most notably Profile of Power by Richard Reeves.

He served as Special Counsel & Adviser to the president, with responsibility for the domestic agenda; however, after the Bay of Pigs debacle, President Kennedy asked Sorensen to take part in foreign policy discussions as well. As a result, he played a critical role in resolving the Cuban Missile Crisis, drafting Kennedy's correspondence with Nikita Khrushchev.
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In 2007, an imaginary Democratic presidential nomination acceptance speech written by Sorensen was published in the Washington Monthly. The magazine had solicited him to write the speech that he would most want the 2008 Democratic nominee to give at the 2008 party convention, without regard to the identity of the nominee.<7>