Transcript: Former President Clinton Speaks at Library Dedication

I thank my pastor, Rex Horn, and all the other ministers here who have taught me, prayed with me and counseled me over the years.

I thank God for my family and Hillary's family. A lot of them are here today, and I thank you for making this whole long trip.

Like I said, I do wish my mother were here. She would have enjoyed seeing all of you, even in the rain. And I promise you, you would have enjoyed seeing her.

Most of all, I want to thank Hillary and Chelsea.

Now, Hillary is a senator, and she has all the power in our family. But she's proving what I always said: She has the best combination of mind and heart, conviction and compassion I've ever encountered. Though I must say Chelsea is giving her mother a good run.

Chelsea, your life and our love for you gave meaning to our public service. They made the presidency the second most important job I ever have had.

I love you both so much. Thank you.

And let me, lastly, thank the people who have contributed to and built this library, the school of public service and the foundation: my staff, my former staff, the board, the architects, the exhibit designers, the landscapers, the contractors, the 1,500 people who put this building up, the city and state officials who supported it. I thank especially the architects, Jim Polshek and Richard Olcott, Ralph Appelbaum for the wonderful exhibits, and my long-time friend Bill Clark, whose company built this building.

I also want to say that I thank those of you who are continuing to help in the work of the library and the foundation.

CLINTON: This library tells the story of America at the end of the 20th century, of a dramatically different time in the way we worked and lived.

We moved out of the Cold War into an age of interdependence, with new possibilities and new dangers.

We moved out of an information -- I mean, an industrial economy into an information age economy.

We moved out of a period when we were obsessed with overcoming the legacy of slavery and discrimination against African-Americans to a point we were challenged to deal with an explosion of diversity of people from all races and ethnic groups and religions from around the world. And we had to change the role of government to deal with that.

That whole story is here in 80 million documents, 21 million e- mails -- two of them mine...

(LAUGHTER)

... 2 million photographs and 80,000 artifacts.

In the interest of openness and public access, we are asking more than 100,000 of these documents to be opened early before the law requires.

I thank those who are working on the Clinton School of Public Service, because I want more young people to go into public service.

I thank those who are working in Harlem and here on my foundation, or who visit us on the Internet, as Hillary said, at clintonfoundation.org, who help us to promote religious and racial reconciliation, to advance citizen service, to promote economic empowerment for poor people in poor communities, and to continue the fight against AIDS.