The majority of the American people still believe that every single individual in this country is entitled to just as much respect, just as much dignity, as every other individual.

We are a people trying not only to solve the problems of the present: unemployment, inflation... but we are attempting on a larger scale to fulfill the promise of America.

The stakes ... are too high for government to be a spectator sport.

A nation is formed by the willingness of each of us to share in the responsibility for upholding the common good.

I do not bring any professional knowledge of the issue to bear, but what I do bring to my consideration of immigration is a deepened and highly sensitized feeling with those persons who feel alien in our country. I can feel the strangeness they feel because it is something I have experienced in a different area.

For our immigration policy to make sense, it is necessary to make distinctions between those who obey the law, and those who violate it.

We must not become the new puritans and reject our society. We must address and master the future together. It can be done if we restore the belief that we share a sense of national community, that we share a common national endeavor. It can be done.