July 4 1776 Quotes & Sayings

The flames kindled on the Fourth of July, 1776, have spread over too much of the globe to be extinguished by the feeble engines of despotism; on the contrary, they will consume these engines and all who work them. — Thomas Jefferson

What's in a name? That is what we ask ourselves in childhood when we write the name that we are told is ours. — James Joyce

The Second Day of July 1776, will be the most memorable Epocha, in the History of America. I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated, by succeeding Generations, as the great anniversary Festival. It ought to be commemorated, as the Day of Deliverance by solemn Acts of Devotion to God Almighty. It ought to be solemnized with Pomp and Parade, with Shews, Games, Sports, Guns, Bells, Bonfires and Illuminations from one End of this Continent to the other from this Time forward forever more. You will think me transported with Enthusiasm but I am not. 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

Henry sailed from England in July of 1776. The stated objectives of Cook's third expedition were twofold. The first was to sail to Tahiti, to return Sir Joseph Banks's pet - the man named Omai - to his homeland. Omai had grown tired of court life and now longed to return home. He had become sulky and fat and difficult, and Banks had grown tired of his pet. The second task was to then sail north, all the way up the Pacific coast of the Americas, in search of a Northwest Passage. — Elizabeth Gilbert

It is better to be high-spirited even though one makes more mistakes, than to be narrow-minded and all too prudent. — Vincent Van Gogh

You don't live life. You act it. — Susan Elizabeth Phillips

Time to stop crying, time to get her act together and do something. Time to move beyond the pity party. — Lisa McMann

In the full tide of successful experiment. — Thomas Jefferson

I push him from my mind. This is no act of easy omission on my part; I do not consign him casually to a forgotten past. It is rather an act of will
a kind of self-performed surgery on my soul ... the bloodiest of mutilations. — Jim Fergus

History began July 4, 1776. Anything before that was a mistake. — Ron Swanson

So, it was done, the break was made, in words at least: on July 2, 1776, in Philadelphia, the American colonies declared independence. If not all thirteen clocks had struck as one, twelve had, and with the other silent, the effect was the same.
It was John Adams, more than anyone, who had made it happen. Further, he seems to have understood more clearly than any what a momentous day it was and in the privacy of two long letters to Abigail, he poured out his feelings as did no one else:
The second day of July 1776 will be the most memorable epocha in the history of America. I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated by succeeding generations as the great anniversary festival. It ought to be commemorated as the Day of Deliverance by solemn acts of devotion to God Almighty. It ought to be solemnized with pomp and parade, with shows, games, sports, guns, bells, bonfires, and illuminations from one end of this continent to the other from this time forward forever more. — David McCullough

The American, by nature, is optimistic. He is experimental, an inventor and a builder who builds best when called upon to build greatly. — John F. Kennedy

Grateful to Almighty God for the blessings which, through Jesus Christ Our Lord, He had conferred on my beloved country in her emancipation and on myself in permitting me, under circumstances of mercy, to live to the age of 89 years, and to survive the fiftieth year of independence, adopted by Congress on the 4th of July 1776 ... — Charles Carroll Of Carrollton

From April 1775 to July 1776, the undeclared war between England and its American colonies smoldered, flared up, appeared to sputter out ... It was hardly, ever, a mass rebellion. — Gore Vidal

I shall not die without a hope that light and liberty are on a steady advance. Even should the cloud of barbarism and despotism again obscure the science and liberties of Europe, this country remains to preserve and restore light and liberty to them. In, short, the flames kindled on the 4th of July, 1776, have spread over too much of the globe to be extinguished by the feeble engines of despotism; on the contrary, they will consume these and all who work for them. — Thomas Jefferson

But before we cue the brass section to blare "The Stars and Stripes Forever," it might be worth taking another moment of melancholy silence to mourn the thwarted reconciliation with the mother country and what might have been. Anyone who accepts the patriots' premise that all men are created equal must come to terms with the fact that the most obvious threat to equality in eighteenth-century North America was not taxation without representation but slavery. Parliament would abolish slavery in the British Empire in 1833, thirty years before President Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation. A return to the British fold in 1776 might have freed American slaves three decades sooner, which is what, a generation and a half? Was independence for some of us more valuable than freedom for all of us? As the former slave Frederick Douglass put it in an Independence Day speech in 1852, "This is your Fourth of July, not mine. — Sarah Vowell

What matters is how well we have loved. — Barack Obama

It was a day in early spring; and as that sweet, genial time of year and atmosphere calls out tender greenness from the ground,
beautiful flowers, or leaves that look beautiful because so long unseen under the snow and decay,
so the pleasant air and warmth had called out three young people, who sat on a sunny hill-side enjoying the warm day and one another. — Nathaniel Hawthorne

On July 2nd, 1776, after the failure of all attempts to reconcile with England, the Continental Congress passed the resolution proposed by Richard Henry Lee for independence. — Darwyn Hassert

I came on to the film with a very happy-go-lucky attitude which I think my character, Charlie, did when she went into the house. I expected it to be good, and then slowly things started to change for us all. — Jennifer Sky