Quotes for Independence Day

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. --That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.”—The Declaration of Independence, adopted July 4, 1776

"Sink or swim, live or die, survive or perish, I give my hand and my heart to this vote. It is true, indeed, that in the beginning we aimed not at independence. But there's a Divinity which shapes our ends. The injustice of England has driven us to arms; and blinded to her own interest for our good, she has obstinately persisted, till independence is now within our grasp. We have but to reach forth to it, and it is ours. Why, then, should we defer the Declaration?”—Daniel Webster, from the oration at the funeral of John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, August 2, 1826, 50 years after the signing of the Declaration—imagining how Adams spoke in Congress in the debate for Independence

“Notwithstanding the dark picture I have this day presented of the state of the nation, I do not despair of this country. There are forces in operation, which must inevitably work The downfall of slavery. "The arm of the Lord is not shortened," and the doom of slavery is certain. I, therefore, leave off where I began, with hope. While drawing encouragement from the Declaration of Independence, the great principles it contains, and the genius of American Institutions, my spirit is also cheered by the obvious tendencies of the age. Nations do not now stand in the same relation to each other that they did ages ago. No nation can now shut itself up from the surrounding world, and trot round in the same old path of its fathers without interference.”—Frederick Douglass, Frederick Douglass: Fourth of July Oration, July 5, 1852, Corinthian Hall, Rochester, N.Y.

“Washington, July 4.--The President of the United States announces to the country that the news from the Army of the Potomac until 10 o'clock P.M., on the 3d inst., is such as to cover that army with brightest honor--to promise a great success to the cause of the Union, and to claim the condolence of all for the many gallant fallen, and that for this he especially desires that on this day, He whose will, not ours, should ever be done, be everywhere remembered and reverenced with profoundest gratification. (Signed) Abraham Lincoln.” ("Congratulatory Address by the President," The Frederick Examiner, 8 July 1863, 2.)

“In the truest sense, freedom cannot be bestowed; it must be achieved.”-- Elbert Hubbard, in his essay on Booker T. Washington in Little Journeys For 1908; Franklin D. Roosevelt later used this line on the occasion of the 74th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation

“When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men, yes, black men as well as white men, would be guaranteed the ‘unalienable Rights’ of ‘Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.’ “—Martin Luther King Jr., “I Have a Dream” speech at the Lincoln Memorial, August 28, 1963

(The work of achieving liberty continues every day, as does the conversation over the best means of doing so. Even friends like Adams and Jefferson quarreled bitterly over it. As we continue to argue in our own time, it would do well for all of us, no matter what our political leanings, to embrace the same spirit possessed by Adams when, picking up a friendship ruptured 17 years before over policy and ambition, wrote his old friend: "You and I ought not to die before we have explained ourselves to each other." Or, as Jefferson phrased it in his first Inaugural Address: “But every difference of opinion is not a difference of principle.” So, here’s to America, where millions like my Irish forebears came for the promissory note of greater political, religious and economic freedom—the land of the second chance in life.)