A patriotic American is a man who is not niggardly and selfish in the things that he enjoys that make for human liberty and the rights of man.  He wants to share them with the whole world, and he is never so proud of the great flag under which he lives as when it comes to mean to other people as well as to himself a symbol of hope and liberty.  I would be ashamed of this flag if it ever did anything outside America that we would not permit it to do inside of America.

The world is becoming more complicated every day, my fellow-citizens.  No man ought to be foolish enough to think that he understands it all.  And, therefore, I am glad that there are some simple things in the world.  One of the simple things is principle.  Honesty is a perfectly simple thing.  It is hard for me to believe that in most circumstances when a man has a choice of ways he does not know which is the right way and which is the wrong way.  No man who has chosen the wrong way ought even to come into Independence Square; it is holy ground which he ought not to tread upon.  He ought not to come where immortal voices have uttered the great sentences of such a document as this Declaration of Independence upon which rests the liberty of a whole nation.

And so I say that it is patriotic sometimes to prefer the honor of the country to its material interest.  Would you rather be deemed by all the nations of the world incapable of keeping your treaty obligations in order that you might have free tolls for American ships?  The treaty under which we gave up that right may have been a mistaken treaty, but there was no mistake about its meaning.

When I have made a promise as a man I try to keep it, and I know of no other rule permissible to a nation.  The most distinguished nation in the world is the nation that can and will keep its promises even to its own hurt.  And I want to say parenthetically that I do not think anybody was hurt.  I cannot be enthusiastic for subsidies to a monopoly, but let those who are enthusiastic for subsidies ask themselves whether they prefer subsidies to unsullied honor.

The most patriotic man, ladies and gentlemen, is sometimes the man who goes in the direction that he thinks right even when he sees half the world against him.  It is the dictate of patriotism to sacrifice yourself if you think that that is the path of honor and of duty.  Do not blame others if they do not agree with you.  Do not die with bitterness in your heart because you did not convince the rest of the world, but die happy because you believe that you tried to serve your country by not selling your soul.  Those were grim days, the days of 1776.  Those gentlemen did not attach their names to the Declaration of Independence on this table expecting a holiday on the next day, and that 4th of July was not itself a holiday.  They attached their signatures to that significant document knowing that if they failed it was certain that every one of them would hang for