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. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.

 –Declaration of

Independence

Statistics show that we lose more fools on this day than in all the other days of the year put together. This proves, by the number left in stock, that one Fourth of July per year is now inadequate, the country has grown so.

 –Mark Twain, Pudd’nhead Wilson’s Calendar

_As the sun was shining and I was strolling, / Through the wheat fields waving and the dust clouds rolling, / I could feel inside me and see all ‘round me / This land was made for you and me.

–Woody Guthrie

Oppression makes a wise man mad. Your fathers were wise men, and if they did not go mad, they became restive under this treatment. They felt themselves the victims of grievous wrongs, wholly incurable in their colonial capacity. With brave men there is always a remedy for oppression. Just here, the idea of a total separation of the colonies from the crown was born! It was a startling idea, much more so, than we, at this distance of time, regard it. The timid and the prudent (as has been intimated) of that day, were, of course, shocked and alarmed by it.

 –Frederick Douglass

These states are the amplest poem, / Here is not merely a nation but a teeming Nation of nations, / Here the doings of men correspond with the broadcast doings of the day and night, / Here is what moves in magnificent masses careless of particulars, / ...Here the flowing trains, here the crowds, equality, diversity, the soul loves.

–Walt Whitman