I watched a small man with thick calluses on both hands work 15 and 16 hours a day. I saw him once literally bleed from the bottoms of his feet, a man who came here uneducated, alone, unable to speak the language, who taught me all I needed to know about faith and hard work by the simple eloquence of his example.

We work harder and we earn less. Income inequality is at the highest point in over a century. While American capitalism never guaranteed success, it did guarantee opportunity, for too many, the dream of economic mobility has been replaced with a nightmare of economic stagnation.

Way down deep the American people are afraid of an entangling relationship between formal religions - or whole bodies of religious belief - and government.

Democracy is not meant to be efficient, it is meant to be fair.

We believe in only the government we need, but we insist on all the government we need.

It's an old story; it's as old as our history. The difference between Democrats and Republicans has always been measured in courage and confidence. The Republicans believe that the wagon train will not make it to the frontier unless some of the old, some of the young, some of the weak, are left behind by the side of the trail. The strong, the strong they tell us, will inherit the land. We Democrats believe in something else. We Democrats believe that we can make it all the way with the whole family intact, and we have more than once.

Those two principles: We're supposed to love one another and we're supposed to work together to make the experience better. That's all the religion you need, really, to make a success of this planet.