Our sons, pride of our nation, this day have set upon a mighty endeavor, a struggle to preserve our Republic, our religion, and our civilization, and to set free a suffering humanity

In the face of impermanence and death, it takes courage to love the things of this world and to believe that praising them is our noblest calling.

The love of liberty is the love of others; the love of power is the love of ourselves.

For as much as government can do and must do, it is ultimately the faith and determination of the American people upon which this nation relies. So let us mark this day with remebrance, of who we are and how far we have traveled.

...

May I have the courage today
To live the life that I would love,
To postpone my dream no longer,
But do at last what I came here for
And waste my heart on fear no more.

There is nothing more majestic than the determined courage of individuals willing to suffer and sacrifice for their freedom and dignity.

This book is dedicated to the people of America — strong, outspoken, intense in their convictions, sometimes wrong-headed but always generous and brave, with a passion for justice no nation has ever matched.

Every man who loves peace, every man who loves his country, every man who loves liberty, ought to have it ever before his eyes, that he may cherish in his heart a due attachment to the Union of America, and be able to set a due value on the means of preserving it.

To accept your country without betraying it, you must love it for that which shows what it might become. America — this monument to the genius of ordinary men and women, this place where hope becomes capacity, this long, halting turn of 'no' into the 'yes' — needs citizens who love it enough to re-imagine and re-make it.

In the face of impossible odds, people who love this country can change it.

god grant that not only the love of liberty but a thorough knowledge of the rights of man may pervade all the nations of the earth, so that anybody may set his foot anywhere on its surface and say: 'This is my country!

I've never been more hopeful about our future. I have never been more hopeful about America. And I ask you to sustain that hope. I'm not talking about blind optimism, the kind of hope that just ignores the enormity of the tasks ahead or the roadblocks that stand in our path. I'm not talking about the wishful idealism that allows us to just sit on the sidelines or shirk from a fight. I have always believed that hope is that stubborn thing inside us that insists, despite all the evidence to the contrary, that something better awaits us so long as we have the courage to keep reaching, to keep working, to keep fighting.

I cherish my own freedom dearly, but I care even more for your freedom. From a response to an offer of conditional freedom, read by Zindzi Mandela at a rally, Jabulani Stadium, Soweto, South Africa,

I cherish my own freedom dearly, but I care even more for your freedom. Too many have died since I went to prison. Too many have suffered for the love of freedom.