Below, weve gathered some of historys greatest patriotic quotes and sayings for use in your patriotic newsletters, bulletins, and 4thof July projects.
"A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government. "
-- Edward Abbey
"I wish that every human life might be pure transparent freedom."
-- Simone de Beauvoir
"A thoughtful mind, when it sees a Nation's flag, sees not the flag only, but the Nation itself; and whatever may be its symbols, its insignia, he reads chiefly in the flag the Government, the principles, the truths, the history which belongs to the Nation that sets it forth."
-- Henry Ward Beecher
"Those who won our independence believed liberty to be the secret of happiness and courage to be the secret of liberty."
-- Louis D. Brandeis
"We can't all be Washingtons, but we can all be patriots."
-- Charles F. Browne
"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
"There is nothing wrong with America that cannot be cured by what is right with America."
-- William J. Clinton
"Patriotism is easy to understand in America; it means looking out for yourself by looking out for your country."
-- Calvin Coolidge
"A man's country is not a certain area of land, of mountains, rivers, and woods, but it is a principle; and patriotism is loyalty to that principle."
-- George William Curtis
"True patriotism hates injustice in its own land more than anywhere else."
-- Clarence Darrow
"This nation will remain the land of the free only so long as it is the home of the brave."
-- Elmer Davis
"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
"If our country is worth dying for in time of war let us resolve that it is truly worth living for in time of peace."
-- Hamilton Fish
"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
"Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote!"
-- Benjamin Franklin
"They that can give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty or safety."
-- Benjamin Franklin
"Where liberty dwells, there is my country."
-- Benjamin Franklin
"Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom."
-- Ben Franklin
"The stern hand of fate has scourged us to an elevation where we can see the great everlasting things that matter for a nation; the great peaks of honour we had forgotten - duty and patriotism, clad in glittering white; the great pinnacle of sacrifice pointing like a rugged finger to heaven."
-- David Lloyd George
"What we need are critical lovers of America - patriots who express their faith in their country by working to improve it."
-- Hubert H. Humphrey
"The cement of this union is the heart-blood of every American."
-- Thomas Jefferson
"Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country."
-- John F. Kennedy
"America is a tune. It must be sung together."
-- Gerald Stanley Lee, Crowds
"America is a passionate idea or it is nothing. America is a human brotherhood or it is chaos."
-- Max Lerner, Actions and Passions
"I like to see a man proud of the place in which he lives. I like to see a man live so that his place will be proud of him."
-- Abraham Lincoln
"There are those, I know, who will say that the liberation of humanity, the freedom of man and mind, is nothing but a dream. They are right. It is the American dream."
-- Archibald MacLeish
"Love your country. Your country is the land where your parents sleep, where is spoken that language in which the chosen of your heart, blushing, whispered the first word of love; it is the home that God has given you that by striving to perfect yourselves therein you may prepare to ascend to him."
-- Giuseppe Mazzini
"It is the love of country that has lighted and that keeps glowing the holy fire of patriotism."
-- J. Horace McFarland
"If there must be trouble let it be in my day, that my child may have peace."
-- Thomas Paine
"These are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman."
-- Thomas Paine
"This country will not be a good place for any of us to live in unless we make it a good place for all of us to live in."
-- Theodore Roosevelt
"Patriotism is not short, frenzied outbursts of emotion, but the tranquil and steady dedication of a lifetime."
-- Adlai Stevenson
"When an American says that he loves his country, he means not only that he loves the New England hills, the prairies glistening in the sun, the wide and rising plains, the great mountains, and the sea. He means that he loves an inner air, an inner light in which freedom lives and in which a man can draw the breath of self-respect."
-- Adlai Stevenson
"If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away."
-- Henry David Thoreau
"May the sun in his course visit no land more free, more happy, more lovely, than this our own country!" -- Daniel Webster
