United States Declaration of Independence Quotations
The Declaration of Independence is a statement adopted by the Continental Congress on July 4, 1776, announcing that the thirteen American colonies then at war with Great Britain were no longer a part of the British Empire. Written primarily by Thomas Jefferson, and approved by the Second Continental Congress on July 4, 1776, the Declaration is a formal explanation of why Congress had voted on July 2 to declare independence.
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Quotes from the Declaration
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with inherent and inalienable Rights; that among these, are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness... ...And for the support of this declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor.- When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
- The reference to "the laws of nature and of nature's God" appears to be borrowed from Alexander Pope, An Essay on Man, epistle iv, line 331: "Slave to no sect, who takes no private road, But looks through Nature up to Nature’s God"; Pope, in turn, may have borrowed it from a letter to Pope by Henry, Viscount Bolingbroke St. John, who praised the modesty of "[o]ne follows Nature and Nature’s God; that is, he follows God in his works and in his word".
- We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with inherent and inalienable Rights; that among these, are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness; that to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed; that whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the people to alter or abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.
- An early draft of the Declaration of Independence (June or July 1776); John Adams altered inalienable to unalienable in the copy that was actually signed, believing this to be more correct. An even earlier draft read: "We hold these truths to be sacred and undeniable; that all men are created equal and independent, that from that equal creation they derive rights inherent and inalienable, among which are the preservation of life, and liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." (June 1776). Compare: "All men are born free and equal, and have certain natural, essential, and unalienable rights", Constitution of Massachusetts (1779).
- We must therefore...hold them as we hold the rest of mankind, enemies in war, in peace friends.
- On the British
- And for the support of this declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor.
Earlier drafts
- He has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating its most sacred rights of life and liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended him, captivating and carrying them into slavery in an other hemisphere, or to incur miserable death in their transportation thither. This piratical warfare, the opprobrium of INFIDEL powers, is the warfare of the CHRISTIAN king of Great Britain. Determined to keep open a market where MEN should be bought and sold, he has prostituted his negative for suppressing every legislative attempt to prohibit or to restrain this execrable commerce. And that this assemblage of horrors might want no fact of distinguished die, he is now exciting those very people to rise in arms among us, and to purchase that liberty of which he has deprived them, by murdering the people on whom he also obtruded them: thus paying off former crimes committed against the LIBERTIES of one people, with crimes which he urges them to commit against the LIVES of an other.
- Known as the "anti-slavery clause", this section drafted by Thomas Jefferson was removed from the Declaration at the behest of representatives of Southern states.
Quotes about the Declaration
- Alphabetized by editor
- I am well aware of the Toil and Blood and Treasure, that it will cost Us to maintain this Declaration, and support and defend these States. Yet through all the Gloom I can see the Rays of ravishing Light and Glory. I can see that the End is more than worth all the Means. And that Posterity will triumph in that Days Transaction, even although We should rue it, which I trust in God We shall not.
- John Adams, letter to Abigail Adams (1776-07-03), published in The Adams Papers : Adams Family Correspondence (2007) edited by Margaret A. Hogan
- Its constitution the glittering and sounding generalities of natural right which make up the Declaration of Independence.
- Rufus Choate, Letter to the Maine Whig Committee (1856). Six years earlier, Choate gave a lecture in Providence which was reviewed by Franklin J. Dickman in the Journal of December 14, 1849. Unless Choate used the words "glittering generalities", and Dickman made reference to them, it would seem as if Dickman must have the credit of originating the catchword. Dickman wrote: "We fear that the glittering generalities of the speaker have left an impression more delightful than permanent". Reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)
- Here, in the first paragraph of the Declaration, is the assertion of the natural right of all to the ballot; for how can "the consent of the governed" be given, if the right to vote be denied?
- Susan B. Anthony, in her "Is It a Crime for a Citizen of the United States to Vote?" speech before her trial for voting (1873)
- If all men are created equal, that is final. If they are endowed with inalienable rights, that is final. If governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, that is final.
- Calvin Coolidge, "Speech on the Occasion of the 150th Anniversary of the Declaration of Independence", 5 July 1926
- We live in an age of science and abounding accumulation of material things. These did not create the Declaration. Our Declaration created them. The things of the spirit come first. Unless we cling to that, all of our material prosperity, overwhelming though it may appear, will turn to a barren scepter in our grasp. If we are to maintain the great heritage bequeathed to us, we must be like minded as the Founders who created. We must not sink into a pagan materialism. We must cultivate the reverence which they had and for the things that are holy. We must follow the spiritual and moral leadership which they showed. We must keep replenished, that they may glow with a more compelling flame, the altar fires before which they worshipped.
- Calvin Coolidge, "Speech on the Occasion of the 150th Anniversary of the Declaration of Independence", 5 July 1926
- About the Declaration there is a finality that is exceedingly restful. It is often asserted that the world has made a great deal of progress since 1776 — that we have had new thoughts and new experiences which have given us a great advance of the people of that day and that we may therefore very well discard their conclusions for something more modern. But, that reasoning cannot be applied to the great charter.
- Calvin Coolidge, Foundations of the Republic; Speeches and Addresses (1926), p. 451.
- No advance, no progress can be made beyond these propositions. If anyone wishes to deny their truth or their soundness, the only direction in which he can proceed historically is not forward, but backward toward a time when there was no equality, no rights of the individual, no rule of the people. Those who wish to proceed in that direction cannot lay claim to progress. They are reactionary. Their ideas are not more "modern," but more ancient than those of our Revolutionary ancestors.
- Calvin Coolidge, Foundations of the Republic; Speeches and Addresses (1926), p. 451
- May it be to the world, what I believe it will be, (to some parts sooner, to others later, but finally to all), the signal of arousing men to burst the chains under which monkish ignorance and superstition had persuaded them to bind themselves, and to assume the blessings and security of self-government.
- Thomas Jefferson, in a letter to Roger C. Weightman, on the decision for Independence made in 1776, and represented by the Declaration (24 June 1826)
- Nearly eighty years ago we began by declaring that all men are created equal; but now from that beginning we have run down to the other declaration, that for some men to enslave others is a "sacred right of self-government." These principles cannot stand together. They are as opposite as God and Mammon; and whoever holds to the one must despise the other. ... Our republican robe is soiled and trailed in the dust. Let us repurify it. ... Let us re-adopt the Declaration of Independence, and with it, the practices, and policy, which harmonize with it. ... If we do this, we shall not only have saved the Union: but we shall have saved it, as to make, and keep it, forever worthy of the saving.
- Abraham Lincoln, in a speech in Peoria (16 October 1854), cited in Abraham Lincoln and the Second American Revolution (1991) by James McPherson, p.126-127
- "All men are created equal. They are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness".
This immortal statement was made in the Declaration of Independence of the United States of America in 1776. In a broader sense, this means: All the peoples on the Earth are equal from birth, all the peoples have a right to live, to be happy and to be free.
The Declaration of the French Revolution made in 1791 on the Rights of Man and the Citizen also states: "All men are born free and with equal rights, and must always remain free and have equal rights."
Those are undeniable truths.
- Ho Chi Minh, Vietnamese Declaration of Independence (2 September 1945)
- Tonight, we gather to affirm the greatness of our nation — not because of the height of our skyscrapers, or the power of our military, or the size of our economy. Our pride is based on a very simple premise, summed up in a declaration made over two hundred years ago: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." That is the true genius of America — a faith in simple dreams, an insistence on small miracles.
- Barack Obama, speech at the Democratic National Convention (27 July 2004)
- Today, on this day of possibility, we stand in the shadow of a lanky, raw-boned man with little formal education who once took the stage at Old Main and told the nation that if anyone did not believe the American principles of freedom and equality, that those principles were timeless and all-inclusive, they should go rip that page out of the Declaration of Independence.
External links
Wikipedia has an article about: United States Declaration of Independence- Declaration of Independence at the National Archives
- US History - Declaration of Independence
- Duke University - The Rough Draft of the Declaration of Independence
- Library of Congress: Declaration of Independence and Related Resources
- Colonial Williamsburg Foundation: The Declaration of Independence and the American Revolution
- University of Virginia: Albert H. Small Declaration of Independence Collection
- PBS/NOVA: The Preservation and History of the Declaration
- Colonial Hall: A Line by Line Historical Analysis of the Grievances
- Three copies of the Declaration of Independence held by the UK National Archives.
- Online Library of Liberty: Strictures upon the Declaration of the Congress at Philadelphia (London 1776), Thomas Hutchinson's reaction to the Declaration, which he regarded as "false and frivolous"
- "The Stylistic Artistry of the Declaration of Independence" by Stephen E. Lucas
- Audio and video
- Mike Malloy reads The Declaration of Independence
- Short film released in 2002 with Hollywood actors reading the Declaration; produced by Norman Lear with an introduction by Morgan Freeman
- Lesson plans
- Object of History: Jefferson Desk
- "An Expression of the American Mind" - Understanding the Declaration of Independence
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