“That I Drink Deeply From Wells That I Did Not Dig….”

From an August, 2008 speech by Newark Mayor Cory Booker.

“They [my parents] had a view of this nation as one founded in a set of perfect ideals, amidst the highest aspirations of human kind. Yet, they also believed our nation was founded in a savagely imperfect reality where the lesser angels of our nature – fear, ignorance, bigotry and brutality – were sobering and formidable obstacles to our nation achieving itself. This was our quest as a people, to truly become who we are, to manifest the idea, the dream, of America.”