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No People can be bound to acknowledge and adore the invisible hand, which conducts the Affairs of men more than the People of the United States. Every step, by which they have advanced to the character of an independent nation, seems to have been distinguished by some token of providential agency.
GEORGE WASHINGTON, first inaugural address, Apr. 30, 1789
Part of America's genius has always been its ability to absorb newcomers, to forge a national identity out of the disparate lot that arrived on our shores.
BARACK OBAMA, The Audacity of Hope
Our progress in degeneracy appears to me to be pretty rapid. As a nation, we began by declaring that "all men are created equal." We now practically read it, "all men are created equal except negroes." When the Know-nothings get control, it will read, "all men are created equal except negroes and foreigners and Catholics." When it comes to this, I shall prefer emigrating to some country where they make no pretense of loving liberty--to Russia, for instance, where despotism can be taken pure, and without the base alloy of hypocrisy.
ABRAHAM LINCOLN, letter to Joshua F. Speed, Aug. 24, 1855
You know, this country today, it seems to me—it’s about fear. And it shouldn’t be about fear. It should be about hope and optimism and creativity and accepting a challenge and being a moral leader and being a great nation.
TOM VILSACK, speech, Oct. 12, 2006
America must be a light to the world, not just a missile.
NANCY PELOSI, response to President Bush's 2004 State of the Union Address
The American Dream can no more remain static than can the American nation.... We cannot any longer take an old approach to world problems. They aren't the same problems. It isn't the same world. We must not adopt the methods of our ancestors; instead, we must emulate that pioneer quality in our ancestors that made them attempt new methods for a New World.
ELEANOR ROOSEVELT, Autobiography
Americans ... still believe in an America where anything's possible -- they just don't think their leaders do.
BARACK OBAMA, fundraising letter, Sep. 1, 2006
America has seen tough times before. We've always known how to get through them. And we've always believed our best days are ahead of us. I believe that still. But we must rise to the occasion, as we always have; change what must be changed; and make the future better than the past.
JOHN MCCAIN, speech, Jun. 3, 2008
Hope is what led a band of colonists to rise up against an empire; what led the greatest of generations to free a continent and heal a nation; what led young women and young men to sit at lunch counters and brave fire hoses and march through Selma and Montgomery for freedom's cause. Hope is what led me here today--with a father from Kenya, a mother from Kansas; and a story that could only happen in the United States of America. Hope is the bedrock of this nation; the belief that our destiny will not be written for us, but by us; by all those men and women who are not content to settle for the world as it is; who have courage to remake the world as it should be.
BARACK OBAMA, speech, Jan. 3, 2008
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