4th of July



The 4th of July is commonly associated with fireworks, parades, barbecues, carnivals, fairs, picnics, concerts, baseball games, family reunions, and political speeches and ceremonies, in addition to various other public and private events celebrating the history, government, and traditions of the United States.

The Declaration of Independence was signed on July 4, 1776, declaring independence from the Kingdom of Great Britain.

I've include a special video triubte to say "Happy Birthday America".

Celebrate the Fourth of July with Independence Day quotes, trivia questions, and patriotic military video tributes.

Enjoy your picnic and fireworks.

Remember and appreciate our service members.

4th of July Quotes Index

4th of July Trivia
About USA Independence Day
America
American Revolution
Beautiful
Freedom
Freedom Isn’t Free Poem
Good Advice
Humorous
Insightful
Inspirational
Liberty
Profound

Happy Birthday America Video

I hope you enjoy this video tribute to celebrate America's birthday. The music is "Proud to be an American" by Lee Greenwood.

Return to Index of 4th of July

4th of July Trivia

Questions

1. What was the main reason the U.S. declared independence?

2. How many people signed the Declaration of Independence?

3. In what city was the Declaration of Independence signed?

4. Whose signature is the largest on the Declaration of Independence?

5. Who was the king of England when the colonies declared their independence?

6. How many people were living in the U. S. in 1776?

7. When did the Liberty Bell crack?

8. When did the Fourth of July become a national holiday?

9. How did the name “Uncle Sam” originate?

10. Why were the stars in a circle on the first flag?

Answers

1. We declared independence because we were taxed without representation.

2. 56 people signed the Declaration of Independence.

3. The Declaration of Independence was signed in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

4. The largest signature on the Declaration of Independence is John Hancock’s.

5. George III was king of England when the colonies declared their independence.

6. There were 2.5 million people living in the U. S. in 1776.

7. The first Liberty Bell cracked when it was being tested. It and the second bell were re-melted and forged again. The third Liberty Bell cracked in 1835.

8. This is the only three-part answer to the Fourth of July Trivia Questions. The Fourth of July became an unpaid holiday for federal workers in 1870. In 1938 it became a paid holiday, and in 1941, it was declared a federal holiday.

9. The name: Uncle Sam” originated in 1812, when a meat packer by the name of Sam Wilson provided meat to the U. S. Army. Someone saw the meat shipments that were stamped with U. S. and joked that the initials stood for "Uncle Sam" and the name stuck.

10. The stars were in a circle on the first flag to show that all the colonies were equal.

Return to Index of 4th of July

About USA Independence Day

"England cannot definitively determine a date of origin.
It is simply too long ago.

China struggles with the same problem.
It was developed long before history was seriously documented.

But we are extremely fortunate to know exactly when our land truly became a country…
July 4th, 1776."
~ George Will

Return to Index of 4th of July

America

"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

"The United States is the only country with a known birthday."
~ James G. Blaine

"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

"What is the essence of America? Finding and maintaining that perfect, delicate balance between freedom 'to' and freedom 'from.'"br>~ Marilyn vos Savant, in Parade

Return to Index of 4th of July

American Revolution

"The American Revolution was a beginning, not a consummation."
~ Woodrow Wilson

"The patriot's blood is the seed of Freedom's tree."
~ Thomas Campbell

Return to Index of 4th of July

Beautiful

"Freedom is the oxygen of the soul."
~ Moshe Dayan

"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

"Our flag is red, white and blue, but our nation is a rainbow - red, yellow, brown, black and white - and we're all precious in God's sight."
~ Jesse Jackson

"I wish that every human life might be pure transparent freedom."
~ Simone de Beauvoir

Return to Index of 4th of July

Freedom

"Freedom is never free."
~ Unknown

"Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom, must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it."
~ Thomas Paine

"Let freedom never perish in your hands."
~ Joseph Addison

"Freedom has its life in the hearts, the actions, the spirit of men and so it must be daily earned and refreshed - else like a flower cut from its life-giving roots, it will wither and die."
~ Dwight D. Eisenhower

"In the truest sense, freedom cannot be bestowed; it must be achieved."
~ Franklin D. Roosevelt

"For what avail the plough or sail, or land or life, if freedom fail?"
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Freedom is nothing but a chance to be better."
~ Albert Camus

"All we have of freedom, all we use or know -
This our fathers bought for us long and long ago."
~ Rudyard Kipling, The Old Issue, 1899

"Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves."
~ Abraham Lincoln

"We stand for freedom. That is our conviction for ourselves; that is our only commitment to others."
~ John F Kennedy

"Only our individual faith in freedom can keep us free."
~ Dwight D. Eisenhower

"The price of freedom is eternal vigilance."
~ Thomas Jefferson

"Freedom makes a huge requirement of every human being. With freedom comes responsibility. For the person who is unwilling to grow up, the person who does not want to carry is own weight, this is a frightening prospect."
~ Eleanor Roosevelt

"The secret of happiness is freedom, and the secret of freedom, courage."
~ Thucydides

"Freedom is a system based on courage."
~ Charles Peguy

"Freedom is not a gift bestowed upon us by other men, but a right that belongs to us by the laws of God and nature."
~ Benjamin Franklin

"Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom. As nations become more corrupt and vicious, they have more need of masters."
~ Benjamin Franklin

Return to Index of 4th of July

Freedom Isn’t Free Poem

"Freedom Isn't Free"

I watched the flag pass by one day.
It fluttered in the breeze
A young soldier saluted it, and then
He stood at ease.
I looked at him in uniform
So young, so tall, so proud
With hair cut square and eyes alert
He'd stand out in any crowd.
I thought how many men like him
Had fallen through the years.
How many died on foreign soil?
How many mothers' tears?
How many Pilots' planes shot down?
How many foxholes were soldiers' graves?
No Freedom isn't free

I heard the sound of taps one night,
When everything was still.
I listened to the bugler play
And felt a sudden chill.
I wondered just how many times
That taps had meant "Amen"
When a flag had draped a coffin
of a brother or a friend.
I thought of all the children,
Of the mothers and the wives,
Of fathers, sons and husbands
With interrupted lives.
I thought about a graveyard at the
bottom of the sea
Of unmarked graves in Arlington.....
No -- Freedom isn't free!!


~ Cadet Major Kelly Strong
Air Force Junior ROTC

Return to Index of 4th of July

Good Advice

"Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it."
~ Thomas Paine: The American Crisis, No. 4, 1777

"We must be free not because we claim freedom, but because we practice it."
~ William Faulkner

"We need an America with the wisdom of experience. But we must not let America grow old in spirit."
~ Hubert H. Humphrey

Return to Index of 4th of July

Humorous

"The 4th of July combines the two things Americans love most in one day: alcohol and explosives."
~ David Letterman

"Republicans believe every day is the Fourth of July, but the democrats believe every day is April 15."
~ Ronald Reagan

Return to Index of 4th of July

Insightful

"It is easy to take liberty for granted, when you have never had it taken from you."
~ Author unknown, sometimes attributed to M. Grundler

"This nation will remain the land of the free only so long as it is the home of the brave."
~ Elmer Davis

"The winds that blow through the wide sky in these mounts, the winds that sweep from Canada to Mexico, from the Pacific to the Atlantic - have always blown on free men."
~ Franklin D. Roosevelt

"Many politicians are in the habit of laying it down as a self-evident proposition that no people ought to be free till they are fit to use their freedom. The maxim is worthy of the fool in the old story who resolved not to go into the water till he had learned to swim."
~ Thomas Macaulay

"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

"The greatest enemy of individual freedom is the individual himself."
~ Saul Alinsky

"All the great things are simple, and many can be expressed in a single word: freedom, justice, honor, duty, mercy, hope".
~ Winston Churchill

"Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed."
~ .Martin Luther King, Jr.

Return to Index of 4th of July

Inspirational

"Then join hand in hand, brave Americans all!
By uniting we stand, by dividing we fall."
~ John Dickinson

Return to Index of 4th of July

Liberty

"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."
~ Abraham Lincoln, the Gettysburg Address, 1863

"Liberty is the breath of life to nations."
~ George Bernard Shaw

"He that would make his own liberty secure, must guard even his enemy from opposition; for if he violates this duty he establishes a precedent that will reach himself."
~ Thomas Paine

"Liberty is always dangerous, but it is the safest thing we have."
~ Harry Emerson Fosdick

"Those who won our independence believed liberty to be the secret of happiness and courage to be the secret of liberty."
~ Louis D. Brandeis

"I prefer liberty with danger to peace with slavery."
~ Unknown

"Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it."
~ George Bernard Shaw, Man and Superman, "Maxims: Liberty and Equality," 1905

"In a chariot of light from the region of the day, The Goddess of Liberty came She brought in her hand as a pledge of her love, the plant she named Liberty Tree."
~ Thomas Paine

"From time to time, the tree of liberty must be watered with the blood of tyrants and patriots."
~ Thomas Jefferson

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

Return to Index of 4th of July

Patriotism

"Where liberty dwells, there is my country."
~ Benjamin Franklin

"And I'm proud to be an American,
where at least I know I'm free.
And I won't forget the men who died,
who gave that right to me."
~ Lee Greenwood - lyrics to "Proud to be an American"

"There is nothing wrong with America that cannot be cured by what is right with America."
~ William J. Clinton

"You have to love a nation that celebrates its independence every July 4, not with a parade of guns, tanks, and soldiers who file by the White House in a show of strength and muscle, but with family picnics where kids throw Frisbees, the potato salad gets iffy, and the flies die from happiness. You may think you have overeaten, but it is patriotism."
~ Erma Bombeck

"And so, my fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country."
~ John F. Kennedy

"Freedom's natal day is here.
Fire the guns and shout for freedom,
See the flag above unfurled!
Hail the stars and stripes forever,
Dearest flag in all the world.
~ Florence A. Jones

"A man's country is not a certain area of land, of mountains, rivers, and woods, but it is a principle and patriotism is loyalty to that principle."
~ George William Curtis

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

"It is the love of country that has lighted and that keeps glowing the holy fire of patriotism."
~ J. Horace McFarland

"I love my freedom. I love my America."
~ Jessi Lane Adams

"My patriotic heart beats red, white, and blue."
~ Author Unknown

"That’s why I stand here tonight. Because for two hundred and thirty two years, at each moment when that promise was in jeopardy, ordinary men and women – students and soldiers, farmers and teachers, nurses and janitors — found the courage to keep it alive."
~ Barack Obama

"When I die, I desire no better winding sheet than the Stars and Stripes, and no softer pillow than the Constitution of my country."
~ Andrew Johnson

"Patriotism is like charity — it begins at home."
~ James Henry

"National honor is national property of the highest value."
~ James Monroe

"Men love their country, not because it is great, but because it is their own."
~ Seneca

"Democracy shows not only its power in reforming governments, but in regenerating a race of men and this is the greatest blessing of free governments."
~ Andrew Jackson, 7th US President (1767-1845)

"Our flag is our national ensign, pure and simple, behold it! Listen to it! Every star has a tongue, every stripe is articulate."
~ Robert C. Winthrop (1809-1894), Senator from Massachusetts

Return to Index of 4th of July

Profound

"Freedom is never dear at any price. It is the breath of life. What would a man not pay for living?"
~ Gandhi

"Better to starve free than be a fat slave."
~ Aesop

"If our country is worth dying for in time of war let us resolve that it is truly worth living for in time of peace."
~ Hamilton Fish

"A statistician made a few calculations and discovered that since the birth of our nation more lives had been lost in celebrating independence than in winning it."
~ Curtis Billings

Return to Index of 4th of July


Return to Celebration Quotes - from 4th of July
Return to Inspiration Oasis Home Page






See all the FREE posters, you get when you signup for my ezine.

Service Members
Enter your E-mail Address
Enter your First Name (optional)
Then

Don't worry — your e-mail address is totally secure.
I promise to use it only to send you Inspiration Oasis.


Related Links

Quotes

4th of July Quotes
Armed Forces Day Quotes
Memorial Day Quotes
Military Quotes
Veterans Day Quotes

Poems

Military Poems
Patriotic Poems

Videos

Patriotic Military Videos



Military OneSource is provided by the Department of Defense at no cost to active duty, Guard and Reserve (regardless of activation status) and their families. It is a virtual extension of installation services.

Visit Military OneSource today at http://www.militaryonesource.mil/ or call 1-800-342-9647."


This is the software I used to
build this site and I LOVE it!