Four quotes related to Independence Day 2025, July-4-2025,
Independence Day 2025
“A nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people.”
John F. Kennedy
“We run our memory back over the pages of history for about eighty-two years and we discover that we were then a very small people in point of numbers, vastly inferior to what we are now, with a vastly less extent of country,—with vastly less of everything we deem desirable among men,—we look upon the change as exceedingly advantageous to us and to our posterity, and we fix upon something that happened away back, as in some way or other being connected with this rise of prosperity. We find a race of men living in that day whom we claim as our fathers and grandfathers; they were iron men, they fought for the principle that they were contending for; and we understood that by what they then did it has followed that the degree of prosperity that we now enjoy has come to us. We hold this annual celebration to remind ourselves of all the good done in this process of time of how it was done and who did it, and how we are historically connected with it; and we go from these meetings in better humor with ourselves—we feel more attached the one to the other, and more firmly bound to the country we inhabit. In every way we are better men in the age, and race, and country in which we live for these celebrations.”
Abraham Lincoln in a speech July-10-1858 known as “electric cord speech.”
It’s called the “electric cord speech” for his closing point:
“We have besides these men descended by blood from our ancestors, perhaps half our people who are not descendants at all of these men. […] If they look back through this history to trace their connection with those days by blood, they find they have none. […] But when they look through that old Declaration of Independence they find that those old men say that “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal,” and then they feel that that moral sentiment taught in that day evidences their relation to those men, that it is the father of all moral principle in them, and that they have a right to claim it as though they were blood of the blood, and flesh of the flesh of the men who wrote that Declaration, and so they are. That is the electric cord in that Declaration that links the hearts of patriotic and liberty-loving men together, that will link those patriotic hearts as long as the love of freedom exists in the minds of men throughout the world.”
Abraham Lincoln in a speech July-10-1858 known as “electric cord speech.”
“In the meantime, the real America had awakened, but in its own way. It had awakened, not as a neurasthenic awakes to a vague and benumbing sense of helplessness in the presence of disaster, but as a strong man awakes to the magnitude of his necessary work.”
Samuel McChord Crothers in “On the Evening of the New Day,” The Atlantic Monthly, January 1919
“Because our system is designed to encourage both differences and dissent, because its checks and balances are designed to preserve the rights of the individual and the locality against preeminent central authority, you and I, Governors, recognize how dependent we both are, one upon the other, for the successful operation of our unique and happy form of government. Our system and our freedom permit the legislative to be pitted against the executive, the State against the Federal Government, the city against the countryside, party against party, interest against interest, all in competition or in contention one with another. Our task–your task in the State House and my task in the White House–is to weave from all these tangled threads a fabric of law and progress. We are not permitted the luxury of irresolution. Others may confine themselves to debate, discussion, and that ultimate luxury–free advice. Our responsibility is one of decision–for to govern is to choose.”
President John F. Kennedy in an Address at Independence Hall, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, July 4, 1962
“Today the challenge of political courage looms larger than ever before. For our everyday life is becoming so saturated with the tremendous power of mass communications that any unpopular or unorthodox course arouses a storm of protests such as John Quincy Adams – under attack in 1807 – could never have envisioned. Our political life is becoming so expensive, so mechanized and so dominated by professional politicians and public relations men that the idealist who dreams of independent statesmanship is rudely awakened by the necessities of election and accomplishment… And thus, in the days ahead, only the very courageous will be able to take the hard and unpopular decisions necessary for our survival…”
John F. Kennedy in Profiles in Courage (1956)
h/t https://www.jfklibrary.org/learn/about-jfk/life-of-john-f-kennedy/john-f-kennedy-quotations
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