Fireworks Fourth of July 4th
Here's a number of pithy quotes about freedom to help celebrate the Fourth of July. Reuters

Every year, Americans celebrate their independence from Great Britain on the Fourth of July. Sure, it’s fun to gather with family and friends to barbeque and knock back a few beers. But there’s also a great deal of history behind America’s independence. Mindful of your patriotic pleasure this Independence Day, a compilation of inspiring quotations focused on freedom have been listed below, via the Huffington Post, Quote Daddy and Quote Garden.

1. Benjamin Franklin: “Where liberty dwells, there is my country.”

2. Ralph Waldo Emerson: “For what avail the plough or sail, or land or life, if freedom fail?”

3. John Hancock: “There, I guess King George will be able to read that.”

4. Albert Einstein: “Everything that is really great and inspiring is created by the individual who can labor in freedom.”

5. Martin Luther King Jr.: “In the process of gaining our rightful place, we must not be guilty of wrongful deeds. Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred. We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline.”

6. Thomas Jefferson: “Our greatest happiness does not depend on the condition of life in which chance has placed us, but is always the result of a good conscience, good health, occupation and freedom in all just pursuits.”

7. Lyndon B. Johnson: “This, then, is the state of the union: free and restless, growing and full of hope. So it was in the beginning. So it shall always be, while God is willing, and we are strong enough to keep the faith.”

8. Mahatma Gandhi: “Freedom is never dear at any price. It is the breath of life. What would a man not pay for living?”

9. Dwight D. Eisenhower: “Only our individual faith in freedom can keep us free.”

10. Abraham Lincoln: “Democracy is the government of the people, by the people, for the people.”

11. Robert Frost: “You have freedom when you’re easy in your harness.”

12. Thomas Paine: “Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom, must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it.”

13. Harry Emerson Fosdick: “Liberty is always dangerous, but it is the safest thing we have.”

14. Franklin D. Roosevelt: “In the truest sense, freedom cannot be bestowed; it must be achieved.”

15. Franklin D. Roosevelt: “The winds that blow through the wide sky in these mounts, the winds that sweep from Canada to Mexico, from the Pacific to the Atlantic, have always blown on free men.”

16. Simone de Beauvoir: “I wish that every human life might be pure transparent freedom.”

17. James G. Blaine: “The United States is the only country with a known birthday.”

18. John Dickinson: “Then join hand in hand, brave Americans all! By uniting we stand, by dividing we fall.”

19. William Faulkner: “We must be free not because we claim freedom, but because we practice it.”

20. Thomas Jefferson: “My God! How little do my countrymen know what precious blessings they are in possession of, and which no other people on earth enjoy!”

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