Despite all of the shortcomings that are so easy to focus on, let us all celebrate this 4th of July with friends and family while remembering all that we should be grateful for. Take a few minutes to read the Declaration of Independence and then enjoy some of the thoughts from history’s greatest orators.
“Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves” ~ Abraham Lincoln
“May the sun in his course visit no land more free, more happy, more lovely, than this our own country!” ~Daniel Webster
“We must be free not because we claim freedom, but because we practice it.” ~ William Faulkner
“My God! How little do my countrymen know what precious blessings they are in possession of, and which no other people on earth enjoy!” ~ Thomas Jefferson
“Liberty is the breath of life to nations” ~ Bernard Shaw
“It ought to be commemorated, as the Day of Deliverance by solemn Acts of Devotion to God Almighty. … I am well aware of the Toil and Blood and Treasure, that it will cost Us to maintain this Declaration, and support and defend these States. Yet through all the Gloom I can see the Rays of ravishing Light and Glory. I can see that the End is more than worth all the Means. And that Posterity will tryumph in that Days Transaction, even altho We should rue it, which I trust in God We shall not.” ~ John Adams
“Nothing is more difficult, and therefore more precious, than to be able to decide” ~ Napoleon Bonaparte
“Where liberty dwells, there is my country” ~ Benjamin Franklin
“We stand for freedom. That is our conviction for ourselves; that is our only commitment to others. ”
~ John F Kennedy
“We on this continent should never forget that men first crossed the Atlantic not to find soil for their ploughs but to secure liberty for their souls.” ~ Robert J. McCracken
“All the great things are simple, and many can be expressed in a single word: freedom, justice, honor, duty, mercy, hope”. ~Winston Churchill
“Better to starve free than be a fat slave” ~ Aesop
“If our country is worth dying for in time of war let us resolve that it is truly worth living for in time of peace.” ~ Hamilton Fish
