Celebrating freedom and independence is a joyous occasion that serves as a reminder of the invaluable liberties and rights we enjoy. It is a time when people come together to honor the struggles and sacrifices of those who fought for freedom, enabling us to live in a society where we can express ourselves, pursue our dreams, and determine our destinies. This celebration represents a collective appreciation for the principles of democracy, equality, and justice, fostering a sense of unity, pride, and gratitude for the freedoms that shape our lives and empower us to build a brighter future for generations to come.
Our faculty have shared some of their favorite quotes on this Independence Celebration (and keep in mind, we celebrate their various and differing points of view as any good academy would)!
Brian Kisida Quotes:
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"Knowledge will forever govern ignorance; and a people who mean to be their own governors must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives" -James Madison "Fight for the things that you care about. But do it in a way that will lead other to join you" -Ruth Bader Ginsburg "A constitution, as important as it is, will mean nothing unless people are yearning for liberty and freedom." -Ruth Bader Ginsburg
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"If we wish to inspire the peoples of the world whose freedom is in jeopardy, if we wish to restore hope to those who have already lost their civil liberties, if we wish to fulfill the promise that is ours, we must correct the remaining imperfections in our practice of democracy. We know the way. We need only the will." -Harry S Truman
"We lose ourselves when we compromise the very ideals that we fight to defend. And we honor those ideals by upholding them not when it's easy, but when it's hard." -Barack Obama
"True peace is not merely the absence of tension; it is the presence of justice." -Martin Luther King Jr.
"Let us not seek to justify our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of hatred." -Martin Luther King Jr.
Michelangelo Landgrave
| I am not included within the pale of this glorious anniversary! Your high independence only reveals the immeasurable distance between us. The blessings in which you, this day, rejoice, are not enjoyed in common. The rich inheritance of justice, liberty, prosperity and independence, bequeathed by your fathers, is shared by you, not by me. The sunlight that brought life and healing to you, has brought stripes and death to me. This Fourth of July is yours, not mine. You may rejoice, I must mourn. To drag a man in fetters into the grand illuminated temple of liberty, and call upon him to join you in joyous anthems, were inhuman mockery and sacrilegious irony. Do you mean, citizens, to mock me, by asking me to speak to-day? |  |
... What, to the American slave, is your Fourth of July? I answer: a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelly to which he is the constant victim. To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciations of tyrants, brass fronted impudence; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious parade, and solemnity, are, to him, mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy—a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages.
... Americans! your republican politics, not less than your republican religion, are flagrantly inconsistent. You boast of your love of liberty, your superior civilization, and your pure Christianity, while the whole political power of the nation (as embodied in the two great political parties) is solemnly pledged to support and perpetuate the enslavement of three millions of your countrymen.
... God speed the hour, the glorious hour, When none on earth Shall exercise a lordly power, Nor in a tyrant’s presence cower; But all to manhood’s stature tower, By equal birth! That hour will com, to each, to all, And from his prison-house, the thrall Go forth.
-Frederick Douglass. 1852. 'What, to the slave, is the fourth of July?' speech.
Rudolfo Hernandez
| “I long to hear that you have declared an independency. And, by the way, in the new code of laws which I suppose it will be necessary for you to make, I desire you would remember the ladies and be more generous and favorable to them than your ancestors. Do not put such unlimited power into the hands of the husbands. Remember, all men would be tyrants if they could. If particular care and attention is not paid to the ladies, we are determined to foment a rebellion, and will not hold ourselves bound by any laws in which we have no voice or representation.” -Abigail Adams to John Adams, March 31, 1776 |  |
“Yet, recollecting that every domestic enjoyment depends on the unimpaired possession of civil and religious liberty, that a concern for the welfare of society ought to equally glow in every human breast, the work was not relinquished.” -Mercy Otis Warren, History of the Rise, Progress, and the Termination of the American Revolution
“This Sir, was a time in which you clearly saw into the injustice of a State of Slavery, and in which you had just apprehensions of the horrors of its condition, it was now Sir, that your abhorrence thereof was so excited, that you publickly held forth this true and invaluable doctrine, which is worthy to be recorded and remember’d in all Succeeding ages. ‘We hold these truths to be Self evident, that all men are created equal, and that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happyness.’” -Benjamin Banneker to Thomas Jefferson, August 19, 1791.
“We must all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately.” Attributed to Ben Franklin.
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Kathleen Miller “Here at home, on this July 4, 1945, let us honor our Nation’s creed of liberty, and the men and women of our armed forces who are carrying this creed with them throughout the world.” -Harry S. Truman |
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