Yankee Doodle Dandy
What is the essence of America? Finding and maintaining that perfect, delicate balance between freedom "to" and freedom "from." ~Marilyn vos Savant, in Parade
America is much more than a geographical fact. It is a political and moral fact - the first community in which men set out in principle to institutionalize freedom, responsible government, and human equality. ~Adlai Stevenson
If you are ashamed to stand by your colors, you had better seek another flag. ~Author Unknown
America is another name for opportunity. Our whole history appears like a last effort of divine providence on behalf of the human race. ~Ralph Waldo Emerson
Of all the supervised conditions for life offered man, those under USA's constitution have proved the best. Wherefore, be sure when you start modifying, corrupting or abrogating it. ~Martin H. Fischer
Some Americans need hyphens in their names, because only part of them has come over; but when the whole man has come over, heart and thought and all, the hyphen drops of its own weight out of his name. ~Woodrow Wilson
Our country is not the only thing to which we owe our allegiance. It is also owed to justice and to humanity. Patriotism consists not in waving the flag, but in striving that our country shall be righteous as well as strong. ~James Bryce
Our great modern Republic. May those who seek the blessings of its institutions and the protection of its flag remember the obligations they impose. ~Ulysses S. Grant
Those who won our independence believed liberty to be the secret of happiness and courage to be the secret of liberty. ~Louis D. Brandeis
Men love their country, not because it is great, but because it is their own. ~Seneca
A real patriot is the fellow who gets a parking ticket and rejoices that the system works. ~Bill Vaughan
Each man must for himself alone decide what is right and what is wrong, which course is patriotic and which isn't. You cannot shirk this and be a man. To decide against your conviction is to be an unqualified and excusable traitor, both to yourself and to your country, let men label you as they may. ~Mark Twain
He is a poor patriot whose patriotism does not enable him to understand how all men everywhere feel about their altars and their hearthstones, their flag and their fatherland. ~Harry Emerson Fosdick
We have enjoyed so much freedom for so long that we are perhaps in danger of forgetting how much blood it cost to establish the Bill of Rights. ~Felix Frankfurter
The American Revolution was a beginning, not a consummation. ~Woodrow Wilson
Side note to my cousin who is, at this moment, enjoying the fact that I squirm under the still astounding and somewhat uncalled for realization that I have Republican leanings in my liberal world: John Adams - not only, arguably, one of the greatest American Presidents but perhaps even one of the greatest Americans - was a Unitarian. Squirm back, little girl.
posted by The Warbler | 7/03/2007 10:52:00 PM
4 Comments:
Great post! I wish every person in this country could be made to take the time to read it and reflect on just what it was each of the folks was referring too and speaking about.
The last of the "Great Americans" involved in the raising of the flag over Iwo Jima died this past week. Just where I wonder, would this country be in the grand scheme of things if all those great guys had forsaken their "duty" to this country? I expect we would still be living under Hitlers 1000 year Reich!
Well, we do have to give a tiny little bit of credit to the Russians for that, too...
But I only say that because I can.
"No American will think it wrong of me if I proclaim that to have the United States at our side was to me the greatest joy. I could not foretell the course of events. I do not pretend to have measured accurately the martial might of Japan, but now at this very moment I knew the United States was in the war, up to the neck and in to the death. So we had won after all! Yes, after Dunkirk; after the fall of France; after the horrible episode of Oran; after the threat of invasion, when, apart from the Air and the Navy, we were an almost unarmed people; after the deadly struggle of the U-boat war - the first Battle of the Atlantic, gained by a hand's breadth; after seventeen months of lonely fighting and nineteen months of my responsibility in dire stress, we had won the war. England would live; Britain would live; the Commonwealth of Nations and the Empire would live. How long the war would last or in what fashion it would end, no man could tell, nor did I at this moment care. Once again in our long Island history we should emerge, however mauled or mutiliated, safe and victorious. We should not be wiped out. Our history would not come to an end. We might not even have to die as individuals. Hitler's fate was sealed. Mussolini's fate was sealed. As for the Japanese, they would be ground to powder. All the rest was merely the proper application of overwhelming force. ... Being saturated and satiated with emotion and sensation, I went to bed and slept the sleep of the saved and thankful."
Winston Churchill on America's entry into WWII.
Does that mean the Russians don't get their itty bitty cred?
Yeah, Churchill was cool...so was FDR...Truman, too, for that matter but that might be because I'm from Missouri.
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