In honor of our nation's most patriotic holiday, and with a little help from the internet, I have enlisted the help of several well-known speakers, writers, statesmen, and various other countrymen to help express me feelings toward this great land we call home. I hope these quotes serve to remind us all just how blessed we are to be living in a place such as this, beginning with the simple though expressed by the first quote below.

"May I never wake up from the American dream."

--Carrie Latet

"My God! How little do my countrymen know what precious blessings they are in possession of, and which no other people on earth enjoy!"

--Thomas Jefferson

"America is another name for opportunity. Our whole history appears like a last effort of divine providence on behalf of the human race."

--Ralph Waldo Emerson

"I like to see a man proud of the place in which he lives. I like to see a man live so that his place will be proud of him."

--Abraham Lincoln

"When an American says that he loves his country, he means not only that he loves the New England hills, the prairies glistening in the sun, the wide and rising plains, the great mountains, and the sea. He means that he loves an inner air, an inner light in which freedom lives and in which a man can draw the breath of self-respect."

--Adlai Stevenson

"There are those, I know, who will say that the liberation of humanity, the freedom of man and mind, is nothing but a dream. They are right. It is the American dream."

--Archibald MacLeish

"How often we fail to realize our good fortune in living in a country where happiness is more than a lack of tragedy."

--Paul Sweeney

"May the sun in his course visit no land more free, more happy, more lovely, than this our own country!"

--Daniel Webster

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

--William J. Clinton

"We on this continent should never forget that men first crossed the Atlantic not to find soil for their ploughs but to secure liberty for their souls."

--Robert J. McCracken

"What we need are critical lovers of America -- patriots who express their faith in their country by working to improve it."

--Hubert H. Humphrey

"We have enjoyed so much freedom for so long that we are perhaps in danger of forgetting how much blood it cost to establish the Bill of Rights."

--Felix Frankfurter

"Patriotism is easy to understand in America -- it means looking out for yourself by looking out for your country."

--Calvin Coolidge

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

--Sinclair Lewis

"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

Happy Independence Day -- and may God continue to truly bless the U.S.A.