A Toast to Divine Madness 

(in the crown of the Statue of Liberty)

With this glass of champagne—I propose a toast to Divina Locura—Divine
Madness that has always inspired the higher expectations of the great
poets throughout the globe. And I propose raising to this magnificent
crown—Divine Madness that, like the oppressed everywhere, has been
kept down—in submission, in seclusion, deprivation, and silence—and has
been kept down by the antithesis of Divine Madness, divine expectation,
divine philosophy, and poetry—by the enemies of greatness and the lovers
of entertainment who have spit in the eyes and slapped the cheeks of
poetry and philosophy—with the cheapening of the heart—the cheapening
of all that is high and noble—the cheapening of all the greatness, the
magnificence, the beauty, the good, the noble, the suspension of the
senses, the charisma, and the good energy that spells, through our good
will, something good for America—something that makes America rise again
from the tippy-top of the Yukon to the tippy-toe of la Tierra del Fuego.