All right, to all of you joining us today, our invited guests, and everyone listening and watching from afar, the Obama Presidential Center was created as a beacon of hope, a monument to our unshakable values, the ones my husband has exemplified his entire life -- Equality, empathy, honesty, inclusion, fairness.

[13:35:00]

And especially during these anxious and divisive times, it is so important that we remember that those values are not unique to my husband. They are the same ones that your husbands and wives, your parents and children, your friends and neighbors exhibit and pass on. Every single day, millions of people in this country wake up doing their very best to live decent and purposeful lives.

Yet, we're all tested in one way or another. And there are plenty of times we all fall short. But deep down in our hearts and souls, we all know right from wrong. We know selflessness from greed, righteousness from injustice. We understand that we all rise and fall together, that every last one of us is an invaluable contributor to the greatness of America.

And I'm talking about the workers living paycheck to paycheck hoping to give their kids a better future. The teachers using their own money to take their students on field trips. The business owners struggling to meet payroll but refusing to close their doors. All those folks sweating over stoves to provide meals for their communities.

Folks shivering in the freezing cold to deliver our packages, picking up trash to keep our parks clean, volunteers dedicating their weekends to coaching tee ball or directing the church choir or mentoring a child, that's where the truth of this country lies. Not in grabbing as much as we can get for ourselves, or knocking folks down to prop ourselves up, but in the overwhelming goodness, the relentless striving, the quiet dignity that is inside all of us.

Our greatest hope is that this center can reflect back just a fraction of that light, that it can capture the beauty of who we all are, no matter what we look like, or where we come from, or how much money we earn, or how we pray, or vote, or speak, or love. It's why, during our administration, we threw open the White House doors to all sorts of folks who don't usually get to meet the president or first lady.

The families pinching pennies to send their first child to college, the teenagers who know that a hot afternoon means the bullets start flying, the military spouses and children serving and sacrificing just like their loved ones in uniform, the native kids showing us that resilience and pride can never be stolen, the 4-H'ers and FFA members with calluses on their hands from feeding livestock, the immigrants proving what it truly means to be a dreamer, these folks --

(APPLAUSE)

M. OBAMA: These folks are Americans too. They are America. They are the beating heart of this country. They are us, and we are them. And to ignore this simple truth, to refuse to respect the contributions and experiences of people who aren't exactly like us, you all, puts us all at risk. Failing to see the humanity in all people puts us all on a slippery slope.

And once that slide starts, there's no telling where it stops. A dangerous precedent that flies in the very face of our faith and of the founding promise of this democracy, that all of us, all of us, are created equal. That each of us is a child of God with inherent value.

(APPLAUSE)

M. OBAMA: And no one, and I mean no one, has the right to sit in judgment of who's American enough.

[13:40:00]

(CROWD CHEERING)

(APPLAUSE)

M. OBAMA: And that's why, folks, we simply don't have the luxury or time to be cynical or complacent, to wring our hands in despair, to wait for someone else to fix the problem. You all hope is all we have because hope is the essential spark that lights the fire change. But hope is a choice, whether or not we use our voices to speak up is a choice, voting is a choice, being a decent human being is a choice, believing that we still hold the power to build a country that reflects us all is a choice.

The Obama Presidential Center is a living testament to the power of choice, you all, the historic example that millions of you gave the world about what this imperfect democracy has strived for and achieved, and an urgent call to go out there and do it again. So I hope that when you walk through this campus and bring your children here, you're reminded of the power of choice and the steady work of change, the arduous, unglamorous march up that mountain one foot after another, day after day, generation after generation.

But I hope -- also hope you fully absorb the elation of achieving something together. You know that feeling when you clear the tree line and see a vista that takes your breath away, a feeling that can never be erased, and I know that can be hard to grasp right now when everything feels so upside down, when fact and fiction run together, when folks seek to stifle speech, limit access to education, devalue diversity, erase the inconvenient parts of our history, when our phones constantly buzz with the latest outrage.

So I hope that this place can offer a respite from all that, at least for a little while. I hope it can reignite the optimism and empathy and ambition that has always powered this country's greatest change. So we want you to come here and put away your phones, and talk and laugh and cry, because you won't cry, and make new friends, get your hands dirty in my garden, push your baby on a swing in the playground, have a romantic picnic on the great lawn because that's the work of democracy too, being neighborly, taking care of public spaces, having some fun, enjoying each other, shaking out of the isolation and division that have crept too deeply into our lives.