Today, I speak, grateful for the more than 12 million Americans who have cast their vote for me in the Democratic primaries — 3 million more than those who have been attracted to the message of Senator Sanders.

When we elected President Barack Obama eight years ago, we celebrated, not yet knowing what was not possible with a Republican Congress. Consequently, we expected a lot. We saw the country come together to elect the first African-American president of the United States — a historic moment for our country — and so we arrived in Washington, D.C. and found that there was a gap between expectation and realities. But it wasn’t a discouraging gap and it didn’t turn us into bitter cynics. It inspired us to do something about that gap. Our love for our country allowed us to question basic assumptions underlying our politics. All of us have that indispensable task of constructive protest.

During Obama’s presidency, we passed the Affordable Care Act to provide health care to millions of Americans. We passed the Dodd-Frank Act to take on Wall Street. We placed Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan on the Supreme Court, two brilliant women that represent the best of our nation. We have made progress. We have narrowed the gap between expectation and reality. We have started an important conversation on the responsibility we should have for our lives as members of a collective group.

Many complex issues have come up during the course of this campaign — how to effectively reduce inequality, eliminate the influence of unaccountable money in politics to revitalize our democracy, and best build upon Obama’s legacy for a more progressive future. But underlying those concerns is a theme, a theme which is so trite and so old because the words are so familiar. It talks about integrity and trust and respect.

We are, all of us, exploring and creating in a world that none of us fully understands. But there are some things we feel — feelings that our prevailing political structure is not leading to the more equitable society that we desire. We’re searching for more immediate, ecstatic, and penetrating modes of living. And so our questions about our government continue. The questions about those institutions are familiar to all of us. We have seen them heralded across the newspapers. Senator Sanders has suggested some of them this morning.

Every protest, every dissent, whether it’s a blog post or a campus rally, is unabashedly an attempt to forge an identity in this particular age. That has meant coming to terms with our humanness within the context of a society that we perceive to hover between the possibility of disaster and the potential for imaginatively responding to our needs.

The goal must be human liberation. A liberation enabling each of us to fulfill our capacity, to follow our dreams, and to give our children a better future than we had. As freedom must be evidenced in action, here again is where we ask ourselves questions about integrity, trust, and respect. Those three words mean different things to all of us. Some of the things they can mean, for instance:

Integrity: The courage to be whole, to live in relation to one another in the full poetry of existence. The only tool we have ultimately to use is our lives, and so we choose a way to live that will demonstrate the way we feel.

Trust: What can you say about a feeling that permeates a generation and that perhaps is not even understood by those who are distrusted? All they can do is keep trying again and again and again. There’s that wonderful line in “East Coker” by Eliot about there’s only the trying, again and again and again; to win again what we’ve lost before.

And, finally, respect: There’s that mutuality of respect between people where you don’t see people as percentage points. This has desperately important political and social consequences. And the word consequences of course catapults us into the future. One of the most tragic things that happened yesterday, a beautiful day, was that I was talking to a woman who said that she wouldn’t want to be me for anything in the world. She wouldn’t want to look ahead because she’s afraid. Fear is always with us but we just don’t have time for it. Not now.

We believe in a future where we stand together for the working people, the sick, and the poor. We believe in a future where a progressive agenda ensures the wealthiest are paying their fair share as Americans. We believe in a future where we leave behind a flourishing planet for our children and grandchildren.

Before I conclude, I would like to share a poem written by a classmate from Wellesley not so long ago:

My entrance into the world of so-called “social problems”

Must be with quiet laughter, or not at all.

The hollow men of anger and bitterness

The bountiful ladies of righteous degradation

All must be left to a bygone age.

And the purpose of history is to provide a receptacle

For all those myths and oddments

Which oddly we have acquired

And from which we would become unburdened

To create a newer world

To transform the future into the present.

We have no need of false revolutions

In a world where categories tend to tyrannize our minds

And hang our wills up on narrow pegs.

It is well at every given moment to seek the limits in our lives.

And once those limits are understood

To understand that limitations no longer exist.

Earth could be fair. And you and I must be free

Not to save the world in a glorious crusade

Not to kill ourselves with a nameless gnawing pain

But to practice with all the skill of our being

The art of making possible.

America’s greatness is earned by every generation. You are that generation. The future is bright and without limits.

United, we will make possible an America where we can all rise together — an America where we lift each other up instead of tearing each other down. Where instead of building walls, we are breaking down barriers. Where love always, always trumps hate.

Thank you all so much.