In celebration...

"I marvel at the miracle of America, the land which the God of Heaven long ago declared to be a land choice above all other lands." --Gordon B. Hinckley

"There is nothing wrong with America that cannot be cured by what is right with America." --Bill Clinton

"America has been another name for opportunity." --Frederick J. Turner

"America is a vast conspiracy to make you happy." --John Updike

"The best way to enhance freedom in other lands is to demonstrate here that our democratic system is worthy of emulation." --Jimmy Carter

"I would like to appeal to the Latter-day Saints ...that we pray for the president of the United States. He is our president. He needs our faith and prayers." --Ezra Taft Benson

"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.

"No man is good enough to govern another man without that other's consent." --Abraham Lincoln

"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." --Benjamin Franklin

"To live under the American Constitution is the greatest political privilege that was ever accorded to the human race." --Calvin Coolidge (attributed)

"Freedom is never given; it is won." --A. Philip Randolph

"America is great because she is good, and if America ever ceases to be good, America will cease to be great." --Alexis de Tocqueville

"Intellectually I know America is no better than any other country; emotionally I know she is better than every other country." --Sinclair Lewis

"God bless America, for she is His creation." --Gordon B. Hinckley

"I love America for her great and brawny strength. I love her for her generous heart. I love her for her tremendous spiritual strengths. She is unique among the nations of the earth--in her discovery, in her birth as a nation, in the amalgamation of the races that have come to her shores, in the strength of her government, in the goodness of her people." --Gordon B. Hinckley

"Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth upon 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." --Abraham Lincoln

"Nations that truly love freedom love God. We in this land have a heritage of freedom. It has rewarded us beyond our brightest dreams. Our God-given freedom, a basic principle of religious truth, is still the most powerful force on the face of the earth." --Ezra Taft Benson

"The man must be bad indeed who can look upon the events of the American Revolution without feeling the warmest gratitude towards the great Author of the Universe whose divine interposition was so frequently manifested in our behalf. And it is my earnest prayer that we may so conduct ourselves as to merit a continuance of those blessings with which we have hitherto been favored." --George Washington

"You cannot become thorough Americans if you think of yourselves in groups. America does not consist of groups. A man who thinks of himself as belonging to a particular national group in America has not yet become an American." --Woodrow Wilson

"I sought for the greatness and genius of America in her commodious harobors and her ample rivers, and it was not there; in her fertile fields and boundless prairies, and it was not there; in her rich mines and her vast world commerce, and it was not there. Not until I went to the churches of America and heard her pulpits aflame with righteousness did I understand the secret of her genius and power." --Alexis de Tocqueville

"Every right carries with it a responsibility. Every opportunity is a challenge. Just as we in the United States have been the most favored of any nation in our heritage, so we bear the greatest responsibility to protect and to pass on these blessings to others." --Ezra Taft Benson

"We should support our government in keeping the flame of liberty burning in the souls of the oppressed--wherever they may be throughout the world." --Ezra Taft Benson

"None who have always been free can understand the terrible fascinating power of the hope of freedom to those who are not free." --Pearl S. Buck

"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 happiiness." --Thomas Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence