Free and Independent Thoughts on the Fourth

We must become the change we wish to see in the world.
-Mahatma Gandhi

What our Constitution indespensably protects is the freedom of each of us, be he Jew or agnostic, Christian or atheist, Buddhist or freethinker, to believe or disbelieve, to worship or not worship, to pray or keep silent, according to his own conscience, uncoerced and unrestrained by government. -Potter Stewart

They that can give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.
-Benjamin Franklin (attributed)

Those who want the government to regulate matters of the mind and spirit are like men who are so afraid of being murdered that they commit suicide. -Harry S. Truman

If we don't believe in freedom of expression for people we despise, we don't believe in it at all. -Noam Chomsky

Patriotism is supporting your country all the time and your government when it deserves it. -Mark Twain

We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty. When the loyal opposition dies, I think the soul of America dies with it.
-Edward R. Murrow

I know of no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them, but to inform their discretion by education. This is the true corrective of abuses of constitutional power.
-Thomas Jefferson

The dissenter is every human being at those moments of his life when he resigns momentarily from the herd and thinks for himself.
-Archibald MacLeish

The most powerful single force in the world today is neither communism nor capitalism, neither the H-bomb nor the guided missile - it is man's eternal desire to be free and independent.
-John F. Kennedy

America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves.
-Abraham Lincoln

I hope ever to see America among the foremost nations of justice and liberality. -George Washington

Me too, George. Me too.

Happy 230th Birthday, America!


This is my 4th of July t-shirt. Nothing says freedom like a BBQ ;)