In the words of an English teacher at Wellesley College…

O beautiful for spacious skies,
For amber waves of grain,
For purple mountain majesties
Above the fruited plain!
America! America!
God shed his grace on thee
And crown thy good with brotherhood
From sea to shining sea!

Oh beautiful, for heroes proved
In liberating strife,
Who more than self their country loved
And mercy more than life!
America! America!
May God thy gold refine
‘Til all success be nobleness
And ev’ry gain divine!

Oh beautiful, for patriot’s dream
That sees beyond the years!
Thine alabaster cities gleam
Undimmed by human tears!
America! America!
God shed his grace on thee
Till selfish gain no longer stain
The banner of the free!

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

It is not the fact of liberty but the way in which liberty is exercised that ultimately determines whether liberty itself survives.
~Dorothy Thompson

Our defense is in the spirit which prized liberty as the heritage of all men, in all lands everywhere. Destroy this spirit and you have planted the seeds of despotism at your own doors.
~Abraham Lincoln

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

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

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

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

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

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

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