Here is the speech with which Barack Obama celebrated the victory in Chicago
Hello Chicago!
(APPLAUSE) If anyone still doubts that America is not a place where nothing is impossible, who still wonders if the dream of our founders is still alive in our time, who still doubt the power of our democracy, tonight is your answer.
(APPLAUSE) The answer lines that stretched around schools and churches in numbers that the nation had never seen before. The answer is people, many of whom voted for the first time, who waited three or four hours in a row because they believed that this time must be different, and that their voice could make a difference.
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The answer is the voice of young and old, rich and poor, Democrats and Republicans, blacks, whites, Hispanics, Asians, Native American, gay, straight, disabled and not disabled: Americans who left message to the world that we have never been a collection of Red States and Blue States We are and always will be the United States of America.
(APPLAUSE) The answer is what led to those who come forward for so long has been said by so many people to be cynical, fearful, doubtful of what could be obtained in person by putting his hand to history, to bend the hope of a better day.
It 's been a long time, but tonight, after what we did today, with this election, at this defining moment, the change has come in America.
(APPLAUSE) Earlier this evening I received a phone call very gracious call from Senator McCain.
(APPLAUSE) Senator McCain has fought long and hard in this campaign, and fought even longer and harder for the country he loves. He has endured sacrifices for America that most of us can not imagine, and we are better off for the service rendered by this brave and selfless leader. I congratulate him and Governor Palin for what they got, and I look forward to working with them in the coming months to renew the promise of this nation.
(APPLAUSE) I want to thank my partner in this adventure, a man who campaigned his heart and spoke for women and men with he grew up in the streets of Scranton ...
(APPLAUSE) ... with whom he traveled commute every day to return home in Delaware, the vice-president elect of the United States, Joe Biden.
(APPLAUSE) I would not be here tonight without the support of my best friend for the last sixteen years ...
(APPLAUSE) ... the rock of my family, love of my life, the next first lady of the nation ...
(APPLAUSE) ... Michelle Obama.
(APPLAUSE) Sasha and Malia ...
(APPLAUSE) ... I love you both very much and ... you have earned the puppy
(laughs) ... that will be with us in the White House ...
(APPLAUSE) And while we're here and she is no longer with us, I know my grandmother is watching, along with the whole family that has made me who I am. In this evening so I miss them, and I know that my debt to them is beyond measure. To my sister Maya, my sister Alma, all my brothers and my sisters, I want to say thanks for the support you have given me. There are really very grateful.
(APPLAUSE) In my campaign manager David Plouffe ...
(APPLAUSE) ... the faceless protagonist of this campaign that has put together the best campaign - I think - in the history of the United States of America.
(APPLAUSE) to my boss strategist David Axelrod ...
(APPLAUSE) ... who was my partner in every phase of this long journey ... its the best team ever put together a campaign in the history of politics ...
(APPLAUSE) ... you have made this possible, and I am forever grateful for the sacrifices they have faced to get there.
But more than anything else, I will never forget those who really belong in this victory belongs to you. I've never been the likeliest candidate for this office. We have not taken the first steps with much money or many endorsements. Our campaign was not planned in the halls of Washington, but in the courtyards Des Moines, the living rooms of Concord, under the arcades of Charleston. It was built by men and women who work, who have dug into what little savings they had to give five dollars, ten dollars, twenty dollars to this cause. The movement has taken hold and has been strengthened thanks to the young people who rejected the myth of their generation ...
(APPLAUSE) ... who have left their homes and their families for jobs that offered little pay and less sleep, the not so young people who braved the bitter cold and scorching heat to knock on doors of strangers; the millions of Americans who have volunteered, and were organized, and proved that after more than two centuries, a government of the people, by the people and for the people has not disappeared from the face of this Earth. This is your victory ...
(APPLAUSE) I know what you did not just win an election and I know you've done for me. You did it because you understand the enormity of the task that lies ahead. Because even as we celebrate tonight, we know the challenges that the future will bring are the greatest of our lives: two wars, a planet in peril, the worst financial crisis in a century now. Although we are here tonight to celebrate, we know that there are at this very moment Americans brave people who are waking up in the deserts of Iraq and the mountains of Afghanistan to risk their lives for us.
There are mothers and fathers who will stay awake after their children will fall asleep and wondering how they'll make to pay the mortgage or the account of the doctor or put aside enough money to pay for college. There is new energy, create jobs, build new schools. We need to face new challenges and put together alliances.
The road opens before us will be long. The climb will be steep. May not get there in a year or even one term, but America! I have never been more hopeful than I am tonight that we to you. I promise you that we as a people will get there!
(APPLAUSE)
AUDIENCE: Yes we can! Yes we can! Yes we can!
OBAMA: There will be setbacks and false starts. There are many who will disagree with every decision or policy which make as President, and we know that government can not solve every problem. But I will always be honest with you about the challenges we face. I will listen, especially when we disagree. Above all, I ask you to join in the work of rebuilding the nation the way in which it is made in America for two years, or brick by brick, piece by piece, calloused hand calloused hand.
What began twenty months ago, in the depths of winter, do not have to end in this autumn night. This victory alone is not the change we wanted, but it is only an opportunity for us to make that change.
And that can not happen if we go back to the same modus operandi.
Change can not happen without you.
then find and put together a new spirit of patriotism, duty and responsibility, in which each of us decides to crank it up, work hard and look after not only individual well-being, but each other. Remember that if this financial crisis teaches us anything, is that we can not have a thriving Wall Street and Main Street suffers in this country, we rise or fall as one nation as one people.
Let us resist the temptation to fall in the same positions as part of the same pettiness, the same immaturity that for so long has poisoned our politics. Let us remember that there was a man from this state that has led for the first time the banner of the Republican Party to the White House, a party founded on the values \u200b\u200bof self-reliance, individual freedom, national unity. These are values \u200b\u200bwe all share, and while the Democratic Party has won a great victory tonight, we must be humble and determination to heal the wounds that have held our nation to move forward.
(APPLAUSE) As Lincoln said to a nation even more divided than ours, "We are not enemies, but friends, and even though the passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection." And to those Americans whose support I have yet to earn, I may not have won your vote, but I hear your voices, I need your help and I will be your president.
(APPLAUSE) To those watching tonight from afar, from beyond our shores, from parliaments and palaces, to those in the forgotten corners Earth found themselves listening to the radio next to, say, our stories are different, but our destiny is shared and a new dawn for the American leadership is at hand.
(APPLAUSE) To those who would tear this world: we will defeat you. To those who seek peace and we support you. And to those who wonder whether America 's beacon still burns as bright tonight we proved once again that the true strength of our nation comes not from the power of our weapons or the scale of our wealth, but by the enduring power of our ideals: democracy, freedom, opportunity and tenacious hope.
(APPLAUSE) Because this is the true genius of America can change. Our union can be achieved. And what we have already achieved gives us hope for what we can and must achieve tomorrow.
This election had many firsts and many stories to be told for generations to come. But in my mind is more present than others, about a woman who voted in Atlanta. Like many other millions of voters she was in line to make his voice heard in this election, but there is something that distinguishes it from others: Ann Nixon Cooper is 106 years old. (APPLAUSE) She was born just a generation away by the end of slavery in an era when there were no cars on the roads or planes in the skies. In those days people like you could not vote for two fundamental reasons for being a woman and the color of his skin.
tonight, I think about all that she must have seen in the course of his life in this century in America, the suffering and hope, the struggle and the progress, when we were told we could not, and the people instead that American creed: Yes we can.
At a time when women's voices were silenced and their hopes, she lived to see them stand up and speak out and reach for the ballot. Yes we can.
Where there was despair in the Dust Bowl (the area south-central United States has become desert due to frequent wind storms of the thirties, NDT) and depression in the fields, she saw a nation overcome its fears with a New Deal, new jobs and a new sense of common purpose. Yes we can.
AUDIENCE: Yes we can.
OBAMA: When the bombs fell on Pearl Harbor, and tyranny threatened the world, she was there to witness a generation rise to greatness and save democracy. Yes we can.
AUDIENCE: Yes we can.
OBAMA: She was there for the buses in Montgomery, the hoses in Birmingham, a bridge in Selma and a preacher from Atlanta who told people that "We Shall Overcome." Yes we can.
AUDIENCE: Yes we can.
OBAMA: A man has set foot on the moon, a wall came down in Berlin, the whole world was connected by our own science and invention. And this year, this election, she pointed the finger to a screen and cast her vote, because after 106 years in America, through the best of times and darkest hours, she knows that America can change. Yes we can.
AUDIENCE: Yes we can.
OBAMA: America, America: we have come so far. We saw so many things. But there is much to be done. So tonight let us ask ourselves: if our children will have the good fortune to live until the next century, if my daughters should live as long as Ann Nixon Cooper, what changes they see? What progress we have made?
Today we have the opportunity to answer these questions. This is our moment. This is our time, we must all put to work, open the doors of opportunity for our children, restore health and promote the cause of peace, to reclaim the American dream and to reaffirm that fundamental truth: we are many but we are one people. We live, we hope, and when we cynicism, and doubt, and those who tell us that we can not, we will respond with belief that timeless that sums up the spirit of a people: Yes, We Can.
(APPLAUSE) Thank you. God bless you and may God Bless the United States of America.
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