PATRIOTIC SONGS  -- AMERICA'S GREATEST HITS

"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."

                    -- Declaration of Independence, 1776

"We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do hereby ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."

                    -- Constitution, 1787

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or of abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble. and to petition the government for the redress of grievances."

                    -- First Amendment, 1791

"Let us restore to social intercourse that harmony and affection without which liberty and even life itself are but dreary things . . . Every difference of opinion is not a difference of principle.  We have called by different names brethren of the same principle.  We are all Republicans. We are all Federalists.  If there be any among us who wish to dissolve this Union or to change its republican form, let them stand undisturbed as monuments of the safety with which error of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left to combat it."

                    -- Jefferson's First Inaugural, 1801

"I had rather be right than be President."

                    -- Henry Clay, 1838, who, in attempting to thread

                        the needle between abolition and slavery,turned out

                        to be neither.

"Do I contradict myself? Very well then I contradict myself, (I am large, I contain multitudes.)"

                        -- Whitman, in Song of Myself, 1855

"If there is no struggle there is no progress.  Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet deprecate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground . . . This struggle may be a moral one; or it may be a physical one; or it may be both moral and physical; but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will."

                        -- Frederick Douglass, 1857

"Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-filed of that war.  We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live . . . But in a larger sense, we can not dedicate -- we can not consecrate -- we can not hallow -- this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract . . . It is for us the living, rather, to . . . here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain -- that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from earth."

                        -- Lincoln, Gettysburg Address, 1863

"My Captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still,

My father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse nor will,

The ship is anchor'd safe and sound, its voyage closed and done,

From fearful trip the victor ship comes in with object won;

        Exult O shores, and ring O bells!

            But I with mournful tread,

                Walk the deck my Captain lies,

                    Fallen cold and dead."

                        -- Whitman, O Captain! My Captain, 1865

"Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction."

                        -- Thirteenth Amendment, 1865

"All Persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges and immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws."

                        -- Fourteenth Amendment, 1868

"The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude."

                        -- Fifteenth Amendment, 1870

"The life of the law has not been logic; it has been experience . . . The law embodies the story of a nation's development through many centuries, and it cannot be dealt with as if it contained only the axioms and corollaries of a book of mathematics."

                        -- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., 1881

"Taxes are the price we pay for a civilized society."

                        -- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., 1904

"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat."

                        -- Theodore Roosevelt, 1910

"The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex."

                        -- Nineteenth Amendment, 1920

"This is pre-eminently the time to speak the truth, the whole truth, frankly and boldly. Nor need we shrink from honestly facing conditions in our country today. This great nation will endure as it has endured, will revive and prosper. So first of all let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself -- nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to turn retreat into advance."

                        -- Franklin D. Roosevelt, 1933

"We conclude that, in the field of public education, the doctrine of  'separate but equal' has no place. Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal."

                        -- Earl Warren, 1954

"Ask not what your country can do for you -- ask what you can do for your country."

                        -- John F. Kennedy, 1961

"I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character."

                        -- Martin Luther King, Jr., 1963

"Freedom is indivisible, and when one man is enslaved, all are not free. When all are free, then we can look forward to that day when this city will be joined as one and  this country and this great continent of Europe in a peaceful and hopeful globe. When that day finally comes, as it will, the people of West Berlin can take sober satisfaction in the fact that they were in the front lines for almost two decades. All free men, wherever they may live, are citizens of Berlin. And, therefore, as a free man, I take pride in the words 'Ich bin ein Berliner.'"

                        -- John F. Kennedy, 1963

"General Secretary Gorbachev, if you seek peace, if you seek prosperity for the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, if you seek liberalization: Come here to this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall."

                        -- Ronald Reagan, 1987

"I can hear you! The rest of the world hears you! And the people who knocked down these buildings will hear all of us soon!"

                        -- George W. Bush, 2001

"I stand here today, grateful for the diversity of my heritage, aware that my parents' dreams live on in my precious daughters. I stand here knowing that my story is part of the larger American story, that I owe a debt to all those who came before me, and that, in no other country on earth, is my story even possible."

                       -- Barack Obama, 2004

"A century ago, President Theodore Roosevelt's invitation to Booker T. Washington to visit -- to dine at the White House -- was taken as an outrage in many quarters. America today is a world away from the cruel and prideful bigotry of that time. There is no better evidence of this than the election of an African-American to the presidency of the United States . . . Senator Obama has achieved a great thing for himself and for his country. I applaud him for it, and offer my sincere sympathy that his beloved grandmother did not live to see this day -- though our faith assures us she is at rest in the presence of her Creator and so very proud of the good man she helped raise."

                        -- John McCain, 2008

"This is America's day. This is democracy's day. A day of history and hope. Of renewal and resolve.  Through a crucible for the ages America has been tested anew and America has risen to the challenge. Today we celebrate the triumph not of a candidate, but of a cause, the cause of democracy. The will of the people has been heard and the will of the people has been heeded."

                        -- Joseph R. Biden, 2021.

"For there is always light if only we are brave enough to see it.
If only we are brave enough to be it."

                        -- Amanda Gordon, 2021