Quotes About Declaration of Independence

It's tempting to romanticize the words King spoke before the Lincoln Memorial. To do so, however, cheapens the courage of the nonviolent soldiers of freedom who faced—and too often paid—the ultimate price for daring America to live up to the implications of the Declaration of Independence and become a country in which liberty was innate and universal, not particular to station, creed, or color.

The founding religion—at least in the Declaration—was based more on a religion of reason than of revelation. But it was still religion.

Garry Wills's classic 1978 book on the Declaration, Inventing America, put it well: "When Jefferson spoke of pursuing happiness," Wills wrote, "he had nothing vague or private in mind. He meant public happiness which is measurable; which is, indeed, the test and justification of any government.

Why did the Articles [of Confederation] fail so completely? Most historians believe the founding fathers spent a great deal of their first constitutional convention drafting the delaration of independence and only realized on July 3rd the Articles were also due.

Do not destroy that immortal emblem of humanity, the Declaration of Independence.

But why did such an imaginative group of people declare independence from one of the greatest empires on earth and establish a truly novel polity but not get rid of an institution that most of them thought was immoral and dangerous?

I am in favor of carrying out the Declaration of Independence to women as well as men. Women having to suffer the burdens of society and government should have their equal rights in it. They do not receive their rights in full proportion.

Elizabeth Cady read the nation's great Declaration, and it bothered her. All men are created equal, it said. But what about women?

When William Johnson and slave walked down that long, winding American road toward freedom and justice, they didn't realize they would be speaking out for all those left behind. They learned that it would take hard work to make the words of the Declaration of Independence mean what they said. Ellen and William Craft were willing to do their part.

When Al Gore picked Joe Lieberman, it was a clear declaration of independence from President Clinton; no Democrat had been more critical of Clinton's misconduct.

In the United States today, the Declaration of Independence hangs on schoolroom walls, but foreign policy follows Machiavelli.

The Declaration of Independence was always our vision of who we wanted to be, our ideal of freedom and justice, how we were going to be different, and what the American experiment was going to be about.

you have to do something for yourself. The Declaration of Independence promises the pursuit of happiness. You got to work for it.

It is impossible to grant someone happiness. The best you can do, as the Declaration of Independence put it, is to give him the freedom to pursue happiness. Happiness is not a tangible thing, it's byproduct of achievement.

In 1776 the wording in the Declaration of Independence—"the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions"—played well to a white audience, but it did not win any friends among Native Americans. Even as the patriots tried to convince the Iroquois to remain neutral, they pushed many into the enemy camp through hostile actions and attitudes.

The Declaration of Independence . . . [is the] declaratory charter of our rights, and the rights of man.

Our founders got it right when they wrote in the Declaration of Independence that our rights come from nature and nature's God, not from government.

To ask whether the natural rights philosophy of the Declaration of Independence is true or false, is essentially a meaningless question.

If our Founding Fathers wanted us to care about the rest of the world, they wouldn't have declared their independence from it.

this Revolutionary ideology, epitomized by the opening lines of the Declaration of Independence, showed that the very idea of slavery is a fiction or fraud, since liberty and equality are fundamental rights that no one can legitimately lose.

those who are afraid of freedom are those who cannot trust us to live in them. Trying to keep the law is actually a declaration of independence, a way of keeping control

In the Steven F. Austin Colony, which was the first colony, Texans first established a provisional government in 1835 with the intention of writing a declaration of independence soon after.

The Declaration of Independence is a sacred part of American history.

Its Constitution--the glittering and sounding generalities of natural right which make up the Declaration of Independence.