"Republics are created by the virtue, public spirit, and intelligence of the citizens. They fall when the wise are banished from the public councils, because they dare to be honest, and the profligate are rewarded, because they flatter the people in order to betray them."

-Joseph Story

Patriotism is easy to understand in America, it means looking out for yourself by looking out for your country.

-Calvin Coolidge

"Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both"

-Benjamin Franklin

"I am only one, but still I am one. I cannot do everything, but still I can do something; and because I can not do everything, I will not refuse to do something that I can do."

Helen Keller

"You can protect your liberties in this world only by protecting the other man's freedom. You can be free if only I am free"

- Clarence Darrow

"Saying nothing... sometimes says the most."

- Emily Dickinson

"Confidence... thrives on honesty, on honor, on the sacredness of obligations, on faithful protection, and on unselfish performance. Without them it cannot live."

- Franklin D. Roosevelt

"It is better to deserve honors and not have them than to have them and not to deserve them."

- Mark Twain

"No man can suffer too much, and no man can fall to soon, if he suffer or if he fall in defense of the liberties and constitution of his country."

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

-Abraham Lincoln

"Liberty is never out of bounds or off limits; it spreads wherever it can capture the imagination of men." 

-E. B. White  

"People who are unable to motivate themselves must be content with mediocrity, no matter how impressive their other talents."

-Andrew Carnegie

"These are times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly. Heaven knows how to put a proper price upon it's goods; and it would be strange indeed, if so celestial an article as Freedom should not be highly rated." 

-Thomas Paine

"God grants liberty only to those who love it, and are always ready to guard and defend it."

-Daniel Webster 

"It is a very great mistake to imagine that the object of loyalty is the authority and interest of one individual man, however dignified by the applause or enriched by the success of popular actions." -Samuel Adams  

"The issue today is the same as it has been throughout all history, whether man shall be allowed to govern himself or be ruled by a small elite."

-Thomas Jefferson

"But, when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object, envinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and provide new guards for their future security."

- Declaration of Independence  

"It is a clear truth that those who every day barter away other men's liberty will soon care little for their own"

-James Otis 

"Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable."

-John F. Kennedy

"The Revolution was effected before the war commenced. The Revolution was in the minds and hearts of the people. This radical change in the principles, opinions, sentiments, and affections of the people was the real American Revolution."

-John Adams