The Declaration Quotes

#1. Is it to be understood that the principles of the Declaration of Independence bear no relation to half of the human race?

Harriet Martineau

#2. The ultimate end is a nation that lies under the concept of the Declaration of Indepen dence. The Declaration of Independence is such an extraordinary statement - it was designed by people skeptical of government, local or national, but in particular national.

Malcolm Wallop

#3. The beliefs expressed in the Declaration of Independence remain a standard for our nation today. They also remain a standard for those nations across the globe striving to achieve democracy.

Paul Gillmor

#4. I'm going to steal the Declaration of Independence.

Nicolas Cage

#5. The signers of the Declaration of Independence and the framers of the Constitution were inspired from on high to do that work.

Brigham Young

#6. I hope every person who reads or hears this will take the time to go back and read the Declaration of Independence. Only by recapturing the spirit of independence can we ensure our government never resembles the one from which the American States declared their separation.

Ron Paul

#7. No senator's vote, except for the declaration of war or the authorization for the use of force, is more important than the confirmation of a nominee for the Supreme Court for a lifetime appointment.

Arlen Specter

#8. The declaration of love may come sooner than expected. Take time before you reciprocate as this may simply be a statement of what they expect from you.

Seneca The Younger

#9. The Declaration of Independence says when government fails, the people have the right to replace it. Well, New York State government has failed and the people have the right, indeed the people have the the people have the obligation, to act.

Andrew Cuomo

#10. Jefferson, incidentally, was also a great adventurer with foods. Among his many other accomplishments, he was the first person in America to slice potatoes lengthwise and fry them. So as well as being the author of the Declaration of Independence, he was also the father of the American French fry.

Bill Bryson

#11. Wait. Wait on God. Keep your mouth shut. Don't expect anything until the declaration is clear and forthright...resist the temptation to trifle with other people's feelings.

Elisabeth Elliot

#12. By the Declaration of Independence, dreaded by the foes an for a time doubtfully viewed by many of the friends of America, everything stood on a new and more respectable footing, both with regard to the operations of war or negotiations with foreign powers.

Mercy Otis Warren

#13. A team of British lawyers has now concluded that the Declaration of Independence was illegal, and the American colonies had no right to secede from England. Well, you thought our court system was backed up.

Jay Leno

#14. Its Constitution
the glittering and sounding generalities of natural right which make up the Declaration of Independence.

Rufus Choate

#15. If you want to change the direction of your life, change the declaration of your lips

Steven Furtick

#16. The absolute contingency of the encounter with someone I didn't know finally takes on the appearance of destiny. The declaration of love marks the transition from chance to destiny, and that's why it is so perilous and so burdened with a kind of horrifying stage fright.

Alain Badiou

#17. The declaration which says that God visits the sins of the fathers upon the children is contrary to every principle of moral justice.

Thomas Paine

#18. I do not believe that any political campaign justifies the declaration of a moratorium on ordinary common sense.

Dwight D. Eisenhower

#19. To ask whether the natural rights philosophy of the Declaration of Independence is true or false, is essentially a meaningless question.

Carl L. Becker

#20. Russia also declared its independence. This was approved by the Supreme Soviet, and you know and remember that there was the Declaration on the Independence of Russia.

Boris Yeltsin

#21. I have never had a feeling politically that did not spring from the sentiments embodied in the Declaration of Independence.
February 22, 1861

Abraham Lincoln

#22. The United States is truly remarkable, a nation founded on a set of Enlightenment ideals so beautifully expressed by the Declaration of Independence and codified in the U.S. Constitution. We should feel good about our ideals, even when we don't quite manage to live up to them.

Jay Parini

#23. There are twenty-seven specific complaints against the British Crown set forth in the Declaration of Independence. To modern ears they still sound reasonable ... in large part, because so many of them can be leveled against the federal government of the United States.

P. J. O'Rourke

#24. Our flag means all that our fathers meant in the Revolutionary War. It means all that the Declaration of Independence meant. It means justice. It means liberty. It means happiness ... Every color means liberty. Every thread means liberty. Every star and stripe means liberty.

Henry Ward Beecher

#25. May every citizen ... have a proper sense of the Deity upon his mind and an impression of the declaration recorded in the Bible, 'Him that honoreth Me I will honor, but he that despiseth Me shall be lightly esteemed.'

Samuel Adams

#26. We live an age of science and of abounding accumulation of material things. These did not create the Declaration. Our Declaration created them ... If we are to maintain the great heritage which has been bequeathed to us, we must be like-minded as the fathers who created it.

Calvin Coolidge

#27. On July 4th, we renew our commitment to the American Idea-the belief that all men are created equal. We read the Declaration. We tell our kids the history. We remember those who died to protect our country. And along the way, we remind ourselves of why we love it.

Paul Ryan

#28. If we accept the logic of the Declaration, reverence for God is not just a matter of religious faith, it is the foundation of justice and citizenship in our republic.

Alan Keyes

#29. I think the authors of that notable instrument [the Declaration of Independence] intended to include all men.

Abraham Lincoln

#30. Our government leaders ... have made many mistakes in the past when they have lost sight of the sacred American values rooted in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. We are at the brink of even graver mistakes and assaults on these values.

Samuel Dash

#31. From the day of the Declaration ... they (the American people) were bound by the laws of God, which they all, and by the laws of The Gospel, which they nearly all, acknowledge as the rules of their conduct.

John Quincy Adams

#32. To me, both the Declaration of Independence and the Communist Manifesto contain underlying truths, but the West doesn't permit a middle road.

Sukarno

#33. The Declaration calls us to recognize the inherent equality of all people. And when it becomes unmistakably evident that a government is denying the governed life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, it's the right of people to establish a new government to secure these unalienable rights.

Mike Crapo

#34. The word 'free' is used three times in the Declaration of Independence and once in the First Amendment to the Constitution, along with 'freedom.' The word 'fair' is not used in either of our founding documents.

Milton Friedman

#35. At the men's end of the table the talk grew more and more animated. The colonel told them that the declaration of war had already appeared in Petersburg and that a copy, which he had himself seen, had that day been forwarded by courier to the commander in chief.

Leo Tolstoy

#36. The strength of this country lies in the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights and the freedom of speech and thought.

George Soros

#37. Many of those who signed the Declaration of Independence were slaveholders. They did not release their slaves upon signing the Declaration, nor did they consider themselves hypocrites. In their view, the rights of men had little to do with Negroes. The

Yuval Noah Harari

#38. Oh, Syd wants me. She's just being English...We totally told her country to go fuck themselves, don't tell me the fact we're American isn't the reason she's blowing me off."

"Dan, I seriously doubt the Declaration of Independence has anything to do with her disinterest in you.

T. Gephart

#39. The Declaration is a magnificent document.

Paul Gillmor

#40. The Declaration of Independence states the the Creator gave man the right to liberty. It seems man can realize that liberty only if he does not forget the One who endowed him with it.

Vaclav Havel

#41. 110 This is the declaration of the Lord to my Lord: "Sit at My right hand until I make Your enemies Your footstool."

Anonymous

#42. I have always believed, heretofore, in the doctrines of the Declaration of Independence, that all men are born free and equal; but of late it appears that some men are born slaves, and I regret that they are not black, so all the world might know them.

Benjamin F. Wade

#43. America was founded on the principle of inalienable rights, not dictated duties. The Declaration of Independence states that every human being has a right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. It does not state that he is born a slave to the needs of others.

Alex Epstein

#44. If you believe in the values of the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, the Declaration of Independence, if you're willing to work hard and play by the rules, you are part of our family. And we're proud to be with you.

William J. Clinton

#45. All Americans mourn the passing of the author of the Declaration of Independence, George Jefferson.

Andy Borowitz

#46. It took us in this country 11 years to get from the Declaration of Independence to the Constitution.

Mitch McConnell

#47. Do not destroy that immortal emblem of humanity, the Declaration of Independence.

Abraham Lincoln

#48. < ... > this Revolutionary ideology, epitomized by the opening lines of the Declaration of Independence, showed that the very idea of slavery is a fiction or fraud, since liberty and equality are fundamental rights that no one can legitimately lose.

David Brion Davis

#49. What Are the Odds? Here's an astonishing fact: John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, who were the only signers of the Declaration of Independence to become president, both died on July 4, 1826.

Kendra Hazlett Armstrong

#50. The right to life is guaranteed to all Americans in the Declaration of Independence, and ensuring this is upheld is the Constitutional duty of all members of Congress.

Rand Paul

#51. Throughout our history, the words of the Declaration have inspired immigrants from around the world to set sail to our shores. These immigrants have helped transform 13 small colonies into a great and growing nation of more than 300 people.

George W. Bush

#52. If the fundamental principles in the Declaration of Independence, as self-evident truths, are real truths, the existence of slavery, in any form, is a wrong.

John Quincy Adams

#53. It is not easy to overcome our natural love of ease, our indisposition to self-denying devotedness, and our false tenderness in flinching from the declaration of unpalatable truths.

Charles Bridges

#54. The Declaration of Independence has established certain moral confines, and governs in a manner consistent with the spirit under which our nation was founded: Love God; love thy neighbor as thyself.

Jeremiah Denton

#55. I beg women to wait. Wait on God. Keep your mouth shut. Don't expect anything until the declaration is clear and forthright. And to the men I say be careful with us, please. Be circumspect.

Elisabeth Elliot

#56. The Lord's Prayer is 66 words, the Gettysburg Address is 286 words, and there are 1,322 words in the Declaration of Independence. Yet, government regulations on the sale of cabbage total 26,911 words.

David McIntosh

#57. If the Declaration of Independence states our creed, there can be no right to abortion, since it means denying the most fundamental right of all to the unborn child, the right to life.

Alan Keyes

#58. Our founders got it right when they wrote in the Declaration of Independence that our rights come from nature and nature's God, not from government.

Paul Ryan

#59. The Declaration of Independence was always our vision of who we wanted to be, our ideal of freedom and justice, how we were going to be different, and what the American experiment was going to be about.

Marian Wright Edelman

#60. The two most sacred documents known to man are the Bible and the Declaration of Independence. Better that a whole generation of men, women, and children should pass away by violent death than a word of either should be violated in this country.

Geraldine Brooks

#61. The Declaration of Independence summarizes the civic principles of American life. It agrees with this biblical perspective when it affirms that we are all created equal and endowed by the Creator, God, with our unalienable rights.

Alan Keyes

#62. From the day of the Declaration, the people of the North American union, and of its constituent states, were associated bodies of civilized men and Christians, in a state of nature, but not of anarchy.

John Quincy Adams

#63. If the words 'life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness' don't include the right to experiment with your own consciousness, then the Declaration of Independence isn't worth the hemp it was written on.

Terence McKenna

#64. Once one accepts the premise of the Declaration of Independence - that governments derive "their just powers from the consent of the governed" - it follows that the governed must, in order to exercise their right of consent, have full freedom of expression.

Thomas I. Emerson

#65. Read the Declaration of Independence to your children as a tradition every Fourth of July. Make sure they understand why the word "pursuit" precedes the word "happiness."

Jeff Bezos

#66. If the Constitution is worth anything, if the Declaration of Independence is worth anything, if the boys who died on the field of battle did not die in vain, fair employment practices are correct and necessary.

Dennis Chavez

#67. The right of parents to direct the upbringing of their children is among the unalienable rights with which the Declaration of Independence proclaims all men [and women] are endowed by their creator.

Antonin Scalia

#68. The Declaration of Independence laid the cornerstone of human government upon the first precepts of Christianity.

John Adams

#69. Look, half the men who signed the Declaration of Independence were either in debt or bankrupt. The remaining half, most of them lost all their possessions. The only reason Monticello didn't get burned to the ground was that the British patrol missed the road.

Eric Massa

#70. Our times demand the declaration of the world's resources as the common heritage of all people.

Jacque Fresco

#71. The two most important documents affecting the destiny of America are the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States. Both these immortal papers relate primarily to the freedom of the individual.

David O. McKay

#72. I am the happiest person I've ever met. This is what Buddhist Yoga and a healthy dose of reading the Declaration of the Independence, The Constitution and the Federalist Papers and anything else I could get my hands on has given me.

Frederick Lenz

#73. The declaration that religious faith shall be unpunished does not give immunity to criminal acts dictated by religious error.

Thomas Jefferson

#74. The Declaration of Independence I always considered as a theatrical show. Jefferson ran away with all the stage effect of that ... and all the glory of it.

John Adams

#75. The Declaration on Strategic Partnership between India and Russia signed in October 2000 became a truly historic step. The developments in the first decade of the 21 century confirmed that it was a particularly significant and timely step.

Vladimir Putin

#76. In the United States today, the Declaration of Independence hangs on schoolroom walls, but foreign policy follows Machiavelli.

Howard Zinn

#77. Jesus would be another wise man or philosopher like Socrates if it were not for three words. With the declaration of these words the message of the good news of Jesus Christ changed from "fanatical audacity", to the fantastic reality of a reconciled relationship and eternal hope. "HE IS RISEN!

Tom Barton

#78. It is proclaimed by the great leaders of that party, by its political conventions, by its ministers of the Gospel, and by every other means they have of giving currency and importance to the declaration, that it is its mission to abolish slavery in the Union.

John H. Reagan

#79. When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir.

Martin Luther King Jr.

#80. The Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, the Civil War - when I really think about them, they all seem about as likely as the parting of the Red Sea.

Sarah Vowell

#81. The Declaration of Independence to which these great men affixed their signatures is much more than a political document. It constitutes a spiritual manifesto-revel ation, if you will-declaring not for this nation only, but for all nations, the source of man's rights.

Ezra Taft Benson

#82. Less than one-third of eighth-graders can identify the historical purpose of the Declaration of Independence - and it's right there in the name.

Sandra Day O'Connor

#83. Only the great generalizations survive. The sharp words of the Declaration of Independence, lampooned then and since as 'glittering generalities,' have turned out blazing ubiquities that will burn forever and ever.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

#84. In name we had the Declaration of Independence in 1776; but we gave the lie by our acts to the words of the Declaration of Independence until 1865; and words count for nothing except in so far as they represent acts.

Theodore Roosevelt

#85. If the American Revolution had produced nothing but the Declaration of Independence, it would have been worthwhile.

Samuel Eliot Morison

#86. the children make of it what they can. What they don't understand today, they might tomorrow. "The Declaration is like a map. You trust that it's right, but you only know by going out and testing it yourself.

Colson Whitehead

#87. Cultural variety is always worth striving for, but must never precede the declaration of human rights.

Bjorn Ulvaeus

#88. Well, you know, Thomas Jefferson, who was the author of the Declaration of Independence said he wouldn't have any atheists in his cabinet because atheists wouldn't swear an oath to God. That was Jefferson and we have never had any Muslims in the cabinet.

Pat Robertson

#89. The British were white, English, and Protestant, just as we were. They had to have some other basis on which to justify independence, and happily they were able to formulate the inalienable truths set forth in the Declaration.

Samuel P. Huntington

#90. This power is made up of the principles described in this book. In the story of the Declaration of Independence it will not be difficult to detect at least six of these principles: DESIRE, DECISION, FAITH, PERSISTENCE, THE MASTER MIND and ORGANISED PLANNING. Throughout

Napoleon Hill

#91. I am in favor of carrying out the Declaration of Independence to women as well as men. Women having to suffer the burdens of society and government should have their equal rights in it. They do not receive their rights in full proportion.

Leland Stanford

#92. The Declaration of Independence pronounced the irrevocable decree of political separation, between the United States and their people on the one part, and the British king, government, and nation on the other.

John Quincy Adams

#93. The Declaration of Independence dogmatically bases all rights on the fact that God created all men equal; and it is right; for if they were not created equal, they were certainly evolved unequal. There is no basis for democracy except in a dogma about the divine origin of man.

Gilbert K. Chesterton

#94. The Union is much older than the Constitution. It was formed in fact, by the Articles of Association in 1774. It was matured and continued by the Declaration of Independence in 1776.

Abraham Lincoln

#95. He gave me a copy of The Declaration of Independence, then he got a tattoo that says Give Me Liberty Or Give Me Death. I think my boyfriend wants his freedom.

Randy Glasbergen

#96. Parliaments are in all cases to declare what is good for the whole; but it is not the declaration of parliament that makes it so.

James Otis

#97. I'm a very competitive person. I always have been. And it's hard to be competitive about something as amorphous as acting. But you can be competitive on the track, because the rules are very simple and the declaration of the winner is very concise.

Paul Newman

#98. That such a perspective of the Declaration's 'Creator God' should sound so foreign and controversial to people today is a tragic and striking sign of how far we are removed from the thinking of our colonial fathers.

Pat Swindall

#99. I enclose to you a copy of the declaration of independence as agreed to by the House, and also, as originally framed. You will judge whether it is the better or worse for the Critics.

Thomas Jefferson

#100. Except for the Bible, the two greatest documents ever written are the U.S. Constitution and the Declaration of Independence.

Rafael Cruz