"My Idea of America"

"That gut instinct, that knowledge would survive my growing awareness of our nation's imperfections: its ongoing racial strife; the perversions of our political system that were laid bare during the Watergate hearings; the wrenching poverty of the Mississippi Delta and the hills of Appalachia, and inner cities and rural communities all across America.
"That instinct that this is the greatest country on Earth survived not only because, in my mind, the joys of American life and culture--its vitality, its variety, its freedom--always outweighed its imperfections, but because I learned that what makes America great has never been its perfection, but the belief that it can be made better.
"I came to understand that our revolution was waged for the sake of that belief: that we could be governed by laws, not men; that we could be equal in the eyes of those laws; that we could be free to say what we want, and assemble with whomever we want, and worship as we please; that we could have the right to pursue our individual dreams, but the obligation to help our fellow citizens pursue theirs."

Barack Obama speaks on patriotism in Independence, Missouri.