From Senator Obama's Speech in Montana Last Night

I love this country not because it’s perfect, but because we’ve always been able to move it closer to perfection. Because through revolution and slavery; war and depression; great battles for civil rights and women’s rights and worker’s rights, generations of Americans have shown their love of country by struggling and sacrificing and risking their lives to bring us that much closer to our founding promise. And as long as I live, I will never forget that I am only standing here because they did.

This is a country where my grandfather signed up to defend after Pearl Harbor and my grandmother sacrificed on a bomber assembly line – a country that thanked this small-town Kansas couple with a college education and a chance to raise my mother in a home of their own.

It’s a country where the letters and prayers of my father were answered – a young Kenyan who wanted nothing more than the chance to study in a magical place called America.

It’s a country where the improbable love of my parents was actually possible; where my mother could raise me without much money but still send me to the best schools in the nation; a country where I’ve seen hope triumph in neighborhoods that were devastated by joblessness and poverty; where I’ve seen ordinary Americans find justice in a courtroom; where I’ve seen progress made for working families who need leaders who are willing to stand up and fight for them.

That is the country I love. That is the promise of America. And in this election, if we can shed our cynicism and our doubts and our fears; if we remember that we rise or fall as one people, and that we can meet any challenge that comes our way if we meet it together, then I believe that this generation will do its part to perfect our union and keep our promise alive in the twenty-first century.

- http://thepage.time.com/obamas-remarks-at-montana-democratic-dinner/