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We are a diverse country, but we are one country. And we are at our best when we come together as Americans, not despite our differences, but in celebration of them.

The diversity of America is a strength of the country, and I don't think that we use that. We don't talk about our strengths. I mean, having so many diverse people in this country from all aspects of all over the world, and we don't use that. I think we should talk about who we are - that melting pot that we've become.

While we celebrate our diversity, what surprises me time and time again as I travel around the constituency is that we are far more united and have far more in common with each other than things that divide us.

Let us stop saying 'white Americans' and 'colored Americans,' let us try once and for all saying... Americans. Let human beings be equal on Earth as in Heaven.

If a man is going to be an American at all let him be so without any qualifying adjectives, and if he is going to be something else, let him drop the word American from his personal description.

I know many people on the left are suspicious of words like Americanization. To them, it can sound like a cover for white privilege and warmongering. It suggests arrogance and groupthink. But these connotations are not fixed. It is in our power to reshape them by recalling the best of America.

Let there be no illusions about the difficulty of forming this kind of a national community. It's tough, difficult, not easy. But a spirit of harmony will survive in America only if each of us remembers that we share a common destiny.

We can bring people together in an era rife with partisanship and divide.

We've got to be Americans first. We've got to pull together and unite.

We don't need a new idea; the idea is called America, and it still works.