• All the Constitution guarantees is the pursuit of happiness. You have to catch up with it yourself. (Benjamin Franklin)
• America did not invent human rights. In a very real sense...human rights invented America. (Jimmy Carter)
• America is a large, friendly dog in a very small room. Every time it wags its tail, it knocks over a chair. (Arnold Joseph Toynbee)
• And so, my fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country. (John Kennedy)
• And when he fell in whirlwind, he went down as when a lordly cedar, green with boughs, goes down with a great shout upon the hills, and leaves a lonesome place against the sky. (Edward Markham about Abraham Lincoln. The quote was used in a eulogy to John Kennedy)
• Apathy is the first step to anarchy.
• The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter. (Sir Winston Churchill)
• Capitalism and communism stand at opposite poles. Their essential difference is this: The communist, seeing the rich man and his fine home, says: "No man should have so much." The capitalist, seeing the same thing, says: "All men should have as much." (Phelps Adams)
• A conservative is a politician who wants to keep what the liberals fought for a generation ago.
• Democracy means not "I am equal to you"...but, "You are equal to me." (James Russell Lowell)
• Do not waste your time on Social Questions. What is the matter with the poor is Poverty; what is the matter with the rich is Uselessness. (George Bernard Shaw)
• Everybody wants to eat at the government's table, but nobody wants to do the dishes. (Werner Finck)
• For the first time in a long while there was a palpable, shared sense that this was indeed our country, and that it was a country worth fighting for. (William John Bennett - reaction to Sept. 11)
• A free society is one where it is safe to be unpopular. (Adlai Stevenson)
• Freedom is nothing else but a chance to be better. (Albert Camus)
• The greatness of a country may be measured by the number of people trying to get in versus the number of people trying to get out.
• I have no country to fight for; my country is the earth, and I am a citizen of the world. (Eugene V. Debs)
• I hope our wisdom will grow with our power, and teach us, that the less we use our power the greater it will be. (Thomas Jefferson)
• I love America more than any other country in this world, and, exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually. (James A.Baldwin)
• The idea of choice is democracy at its best;
  the choice itself may be the worst.
• If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich.
• 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)
• If you are to stand up for your government you must be able to stand up to your government. (Harold Caccia)
• If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor. (Bishop Desmond Tutu)
• I'm tired of hearing it said that democracy doesn't work. Of course it doesn't work. We are supposed to work it. (Alexander Woollcott)
• Intellectually I know that America is no better than any other country; emotionally I know she is better than every other country. (Sinclair Lewis)
• It is the duty of the patriot to protect his country from its government. (Thomas Paine)
• Let America realize that self-scrutiny is not treason. Self-examination is not disloyalty. (Richard Cardinal Cushing)
• Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we will pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and the success of Liberty. (President John F. Kennedy)
• 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)
• The men the American people admire most extravagantly are the most daring liars;
  the men they detest most violently are those who try to tell them the truth. (H. L. Mencken)
• 'My country right or wrong' is like saying 'My mother drunk or sober'. (G.K. Chesterton)
• The next time you feel like complaining, remember that your garbage disposal probably eats better than 30% of the people in the world. (Robert Orben)
• 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)
• Our country, right or wrong. When right, to be kept right; when wrong, to be put right. (Carl Schurz)
• Our government...teaches the whole people by its example. If the government becomes the lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for law; it invites every man to become a law unto himself; it invites anarchy. (Justice Louis Dembitz Brandeis)
• Patriotism is not short, frenzied outbursts of emotion, but the tranquil and steady dedication of a lifetime. (Adlai Stevenson)
• Patriotism is the veneration of real estate above principles. (George Jean Nathan)
• A people that values its privileges above its principles soon loses both.
• A person who is not a liberal at 16 has no heart,
  A person who is not a conservative at 60 has no head.
• A politician thinks of the next election; a statesman thinks of the next generation. (James Freeman Clarke)
• Punishment is now unfashionable...because it creates moral distinctions among men, which, to the democratic mind, are odious. We prefer a meaningless collective guilt to a meaningful individual responsibility. (Thomas Szasz)
• Responsibility is the price of freedom. (Elbert Hubbard)
• The right to be heard does not automatically include the right to be taken seriously. (Hubert H. Humphrey)
• Strange that we all defend our wrongs with more vigor than we do our rights. (Kahlil Gibran)
• There are those, I know, who will reply that the liberation of humanity, the freedom of man and mind, is nothing but a dream. They are right. It is. It is the American Dream. (Archibald MacLeish)
• They have a right to censure, that have a heart to help.
• They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.
• Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable. (John F. Kennedy)
• True patriotism hates injustice in its own land more than anywhere else.
• We have the Bill of Rights. What we need is a Bill of Responsibilities. (Bill Maher)
• We have the power to make this the best generation of mankind in the history of the world - or to make it the last.
• 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. (The Declaration of Independence)
• What the United States does best is to understand itself. What it does worst is understand others. (Carlos Fuentes)
• With ever civil liberty there has to be a corresponding civil obligation. (Ed Haines)
• You cannot help men permanently by doing for them what they could and should do for themselves. (Abraham Lincoln)
• You do not examine legislation in the light of the benefits it will convey if properly administered, but in the light of the wrongs it would do and the harms it would cause if improperly administered. (Lyndon B. Johnson)
• You only have power over people so long as you don't take everything away from them. But when you've robbed a man of everything he's no longer in your power--he's free again. (Alexander Solzhenitsyn)

Theodore Roosevelt on Patriotism

Patriotism means to stand by the country. It does NOT mean to stand by the President or any other public official save exactly to the degree in which he himself stands by the country. It is patriotic to support him insofar as he efficiently serves the country. It is unpatriotic not to oppose him to the exact extent that by inefficiency or otherwise he fails in his duty to stand by the country.

Theodore Roosevelt on Immigrants

In the first place, we should insist that if the immigrant who comes here in good faith becomes an American and assimilates himself to us, he shall be treated on an exact equality with everyone else, for it is an outrage to discriminate against any such man because of creed, or birthplace, or origin. But this is predicated upon the person's becoming in every facet an American, and nothing but an American...There can be no divided allegiance here. Any man who says he is an American, but something else also, isn't an American at all. We have room for but one flag, the American flag... We have room for but one language here, and that is the English language... and we have room for but one sole loyalty and that is a loyalty to the American people. (1907)

Voting

• A citizen of America will cross the ocean to fight for democracy but won't cross the street to vote in a national election. (Bill Vaughan)
• Don't vote, it only encourages them.
• The great thing about democracy is that it gives every voter a chance to do something stupid. (Art Spander)
• If we quit voting, will they all go away?
• The ignorance of one voter in a democracy impairs the security of all. (John F. Kennedy)
• Let us never forget that government is ourselves and not an alien power over us. The ultimate rulers of our democracy are not a President and senators and congressmen and government officials, but the voters of this country. (Franklin D. Roosevelt)
• To make democracy work, we must be a notion of participants, not simply observers. One who does not vote has no right to complain. (Louis L'Amour)
• The vote is the most powerful instrument ever devised by man for breaking down injustice and destroying the terrible walls which imprison men because they are different from other men. (Lyndon B. Johnson)

ABC's of Patriotism

A - Always Ready, American, America the Beautiful, Army, Air Force, airborne, armistice, admiral, Annapolis, artillery, at ease, attention, armor, allegiance, amber waves of grain, apple pie, Alaska, Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas
B - brave, best, beret, barracks, brigade, battle, bars, braid, bold, beautiful, bill of rights, baseball, Brooklyn Bridge, brotherhood, Boy Scouts
C - Coast Guard, courage, carrier, constitution, captain, corporal, colonel, cavalry, carrier, camouflage, commander, corps, can do, congress, Columbus, California, Colorado, Connecticut
D - dawn's early light, destroyer, duty, destroyer, defend, democracy, Delaware, District of Columbia, Dixie, due process
E - eagle, enlist, equality, ensign, enduring, ethical, elections, economy, enforce
F - freedom, Fourth of July, fireworks, flag, fighter, Fort Benning, free speech, Florida
G - ground zero, glory, grateful, guard, gallantly gleaming, general, gunnery, grand old flag, God Bless America, Green Berets, Georgia, Grand Canyon, government, Gettysburg, Girl Scouts, governor
H - helicopter, home, hero, helmet, honors, hum-v, happiness, homeland security, human rights, house of representatives
I - independence, infantry, indivisible, insignia, integrity, inspection, inauguration, inventive, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, inspirational
J - jet, justice, JAG, judicial system, jury
K - kit, Kilroy, khaki, k-rations, kindness, kinship, keeper of peace, Kansas, Kentucky
L - land of the free, let freedom ring, liberty, loyal(ty), lieutenant, laws, Louisiana
M - military, marines, Memorial Day, major, midshipman, march, MRE, mountains majesty, Maine, Maryland, Minnesota, Montana, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, Mount Rushmore, medal of honor
N - Navy, NCO, nautical, National Guard, Normandy, nations, noble, Nebraska, Nevada, New Mexico, New Hampshire, New Jersey, North Carolina, North Dakota
O - operations, One Nation, Old Glory, orders, office, Olympics, opportunity, Ohio, Oklahoma
P - paratrooper, parachute, patriot, president, pentagon, private, protect, pride, Pledge of Allegiance, platoon, patrol, parade, Pearl Harbor, proud, prosperity, peace, Philadelphia, Picturesque, Politics, Pennsylvania, Pilgrims, Purple Heart
Q - Quantico, quality of life, quiet dignity
R - rebel, ranger, rank, reveille, rifle, reserves, rations, rights, republic, red white & blue, respect, representation, Rhode Island
S - soldier, seals, sailor, ship, stars & stripes, sergeant, salute, SAC, squad, submarine, stripes, stars, salute, September 11, security, Seabees, special forces, Star Spangled Banner, sea to shining sea, spacious skies, supreme court, Senate, South Carolina, South Dakota, statue of Liberty
T - troops, terrorism, territory, tour, tradition, taps, tank, tranquility, Thanksgiving, thankful, Tennessee, Texas
U - uniform, United States, unity, Utah, union, U.S.A., united, under God, Uncle Sam
V - victory, veteran, valor, victorious, vigilant, Vermont, volunteers, voting
W - weapons, West Point, WAC, We the People, world leaders, White House, Washington D.C., West Virginia, Wyoming, Wisconsin, wild west, World Trade Center
X - x-cellence, x-ceptional, eXtraordinary, X-pansive (characterized by richness, abundance, or magnificence)
Y - Yankee, Yankee Doodle
Z - zealous, zero tolerance, amaZing

Also use state names, presidents names, etc.

One

Lesson Learned

(Leonard Pitts, Jr., 12 Sep 2001)

What lesson did you hope to teach us by your coward's attack on our World Trade Center, our Pentagon, us? What was it you hoped we would learn? Whatever it was, please know that you failed. Did you want us to respect your cause? You just damned your cause. Did you want to make us fear? You just steeled our resolve. Did you want to tear us apart? You just brought us together... So I ask again: What was it you hoped to teach us? It occurs to me that maybe you just wanted us to know the depths of your hatred. If that's the case, consider the message received. And take this message in exchange: You don't know my people. You don't know what we're capable of. You don't know what you just started. But you're about to learn.

What Does Columbine Say About Us?

Bob Lonsberry wrote a wonderful column shortly after the shooting in Columbine in 1999. He pointed out all the wonderful, heroic things that were done by ordinary people at the time of the tragedy. The point of the column was that if we blame ourselves and society for the shooting we also have to take the credit for the good things that were done.

Thomas Jefferson

(Steven and Rosemary Benet)