Adlai Stevenson: “May we not confidently abide in the hope that brighter days are in waiting for the beautiful island and her gallant…”

Illinois, in all that constitutes true grandeur in a people, knows no superior among the great sisterhood of States.

The great navigator in his lonely search for a new pathway to the Indies was buoyed by a courage, a yearning for discovery, scarce greater than that which in the heart of the new continent sustained the later voyagers and discoverers…

It is high privilege and high honor to be a citizen of this grand republic.

America's obligation to France is enduring--for explorers in the seventeenth century no less than for defenders in that which immediately followed.