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They will only grow louder and more dissonant in the weeks and months to come. We've been asked to pause for a reality check; we've been warned against offering the people of this nation false hope. But in the unlikely story that is America, there has never been anything false about hope.
For when we have faced down impossible odds, when we've been told we're not ready, or that we shouldn't try, or that we can't, generations of Americans have responded with a simple creed that sums up the spirit of a people: YES WE CAN.
It was a creed written into the founding documents that declared the destiny of a nation: YES WE CAN.
It was whispered by slaves and abolitionists as they blazed a trail toward freedom through the darkest of nights: YES WE CAN.
It was sung by immigrants as they struck out from distant shores and pioneers who pushed westward against an unforgiving wilderness: YES WE CAN.
It was the call of workers who organized, women who reached for the ballot, a President who chose the moon as our new frontier, and a King who took us to the mountaintop, and pointed the way to the Promised Land: YES WE CAN to justice and equality.
YES WE CAN to opportunity and prosperity. YES WE CAN heal this nation. YES WE CAN repair this world. YES WE CAN.
And so tomorrow, as we take the campaign south and west, as we learn that the struggles of the textile workers in Spartanburg are not so different than the plight of the dishwasher in Las Vegas, that the hopes of the little girl who goes to the crumbling school in Dillon are the same as the dreams of the boy who learns on the streets of L.A., we will remember that there is something happening in America, that we are not as divided as our politics suggest, that we are one people, we are one nation, and together we will begin the next great chapter in the American story with three words that will ring from coast to coast, from sea to shining sea:
YES WE CAN."
Barack Obama, Nashua, New Hampshire January 8, 2008
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