Happy 4th!!!

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.

 ~Lyndon B. Johnson

Those who won our independence believed liberty to be the secret of happiness 

and courage to be the secret of liberty. 

~Louis D. Brandeis

Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom, must, like men, 

undergo the fatigue of supporting it. 

~Thomas Paine

America is much more than a geographical fact. 

It is a political and moral fact — the first community in which men set out in principle to institutionalize freedom, responsible government, and human equality.

 ~Adlai Stevenson

Freedom has its life in the hearts, the actions, the spirit of men and so it must be daily earned and refreshed — else like a flower cut from its life-giving roots, it will wither and die. ~Dwight D. Eisenhower

You have to love a nation that celebrates its independence every July 4, not with a parade of guns, tanks, and soldiers who file by the White House in a show of strength and muscle, but with family picnics where kids throw Frisbees, the potato salad gets iffy, and the flies die from happiness. You may think you have overeaten, but it is patriotism.

 ~Erma Bombeck

From every mountain side
Let Freedom ring.
~Samuel F. Smith, "America"