History has shown us time and again that the spirit of our nation cannot be defeated. Those who now want to divide us and return us to a dark past, which no Romanian wants anymore, will not succeed. And they will not succeed because our strength lies precisely in our unity and in our common belief in freedom and democracy.

In all these ways, and through all these years, there has been made manifest the unconquered and unconquerable spirit of our race, nourished on the glorious traditions of many centuries of freedom. This spirit, conscious of its strength, bore the trials and disappointments of these years with a fortitude that was never shaken and a confidence that never failed. It knew its motives to be pure, and it held fast to its faith that Divine Providence would not suffer injustice and oppression to prevail.

It is the moral factor which decides the fate of nations: man's spirit can prove greater than the power of leviathan. A nation is swiftly overcome if its spirit is weak; but with unyielding determination it can vanquish powers that appear to be utterly invincible.

[I]t is not merely our fleets and armies, our powerful artillery, our accumulated capital, and our unlimited credit on which I so much depend, as upon that unbroken spirit of her people, which I believe was never prouder of the Imperial country to which they belong. Gentlemen, it is to that spirit that I above all things trust.

If we can't be a great nation in population we can be a great nation in spirit!

The spirit of the nation is a great force, but it is one which cannot be always on the alert, and while it sleeps, the part of noble institutions is to keep watch.

The strength of the human spirit knows no boundaries.

No nation is truly defeated which retains its spiritual self-possession. No nation is truly victorious which does not emerge soul unstained.

Mightier than divisions of infantry and cavalry, more powerful than dynamite and ammonal, more irresistible than poison gas and boiling oil, is the spirit of the cross. It is the one thing in the world that cannot be frightened, discouraged or conquered. It is the one sure way of overcoming personal, industrial, and political oppression. Truly it is the greatest thing in the world.

No matter how long a wall has stood, none has the power to withstand the continued force of human beings who have decided to persist until it has fallen. The human spirit truly is unconquerable.

But it is not enough to achieve these purposes alone. It is not enough to clothe and feed the body of this Nation, and instruct and inform its mind. For there is also the spirit. And of the three, the greatest is the spirit. Without the body and the mind, as all men know, the Nation could not live. But if the spirit of America were killed, even though the Nation's body and mind, constricted in an alien world, lived on, the America we know would have perished.

Nationality is the great carrier of custom, of unreflecting habit and transmitted ideas that quench individuality. Conscience gives men force to resist and discard all this. Nationality has to be dealt with discriminatingly. It is not always liberal or constructive. It may be as dangerous when its boundary is outside that of the State as salutary when inside.

There is no nation so powerful, as the one that obeys its laws not from principles of fear or
reason, but from passion.

Il n'y a pas de nation aussi puissante que celle qui obéit à ses lois non pas par des principes de peur ou de raison, mais par passion.