I accept the Republican nomination for the U.S. Senate, to represent the State of Illinois.

A nation of character is filled with citizens who gradually build lives based on the living awareness that their deeds are judged by eyes of unchanging truth, by a will that is the real measure of what is right, and therefore of what is good.

How does it secure the blessings of liberty to our posterity, to those generations yet unborn, to kill them, aborting them in the womb?

Our leaders will serve the common good with better laws and better actions only when we serve it first, by casting better votes.

The act of voting is one opportunity for us to remember that our whole way of life is predicated on the capacity of ordinary people to judge carefully and well.

Rights don't come from human documents. The very idea is only worthy of contempt. Human documents are nothing but pieces of paper, they are nothing but words--until by will, and conscience, and courage, and commitment, human beings turn them into reality.

Our first responsibility is not to ourselves. Our first responsibility is to our country and to our God.