Happy Independence Day!
Jon Stokes 07.04.13
Barry Ritholz has a pulled together a great collection of quotes from the Founding Fathers. And because these quotes belong to all of us, I’m going to do do something I wouldn’t normally do and steal them all.
“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”.
-Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826)“They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.”
-Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790)“I always consider the settlement of America with reverence and wonder, as the opening of a grand scene and design in providence, for the illumination of the ignorant and the emancipation of the slavish part of mankind all over the earth.
-John Adams (1735-1826)“That these united colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent states; that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British crown; and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain is, and ought to be, totally dissolved.”
-Richard Henry Lee (1732-1794)“There! I guess King George will be able to read THAT!
-John Hancock (1737-1793)“Idleness and pride tax with a heavier hand than kings and parliaments. If we can get rid of the former, we may easily bear the latter.”
-Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790)“Liberty cannot be preserved without a general knowledge among the people, who have a right and a desire to know; but besides this, they have a right, an indisputable, unalienable, indefeasible, divine right to that most dreaded and envied kind of knowledge, I mean of the characters and conduct of their rulers.
-John Adams (1735-1826)“While Gen’l Howe with a Large Armament is advancing towards N. York, our Congress resolved to Declare the United Colonies free and Independent States. A Declaration for this Purpose, I expect, will this day pass Congress…It is gone so far that we must now be a free independent State, or a Conquered Country. “
-Abraham Clark (1726-1794)“The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government.”
-Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826)“I am well aware of the toil and blood and treasure it will cost us to maintain this declaration, and support and defend these states. Yet through all the gloom I see the rays of ravishing light and glory. I can see that the end is worth all the means. This is our day of deliverance.”
-John Adams (1735-1826)“Equal and exact justice to all men — freedom of religion, freedom of the press, freedom of person under the protection of the habeas corpus; and trial by juries impartially selected, these principles form the bright constellation which has gone before us.”
-Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826)“We must all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately.”
-Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790)
Not much to say after that… I think the Founders have pretty much summed it up.
