With citizenship comes the privilege of an American passport. Like anything new, you tend to take a closer look at things. Something most Americans with passports may never notice.
Check this out. Inscribed on each page is a significant quote which you may relate too in a special way. As America celebrates her 236th birthday, let’s take a look at what excerpts she holds on high (or, for you cynics out there - quotations some bureaucrat in charge of passports chose):
The principle of free governments adheres to the American soil. It is bedded in it, immovable as its mountains.
Daniel Webster
Let us raise a standard to which the wise and honest can repair.
George Washington
We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by they Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness
excerpt from the Declaration of Independence
We have a great dream. It stared way back in 1776, and God grant that America will be true to her dream.
Martin Luther King, Jr.
Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and the success of liberty.
John F. Kennedy
This is a new nation, based on a mighty continent, of boundless possibilities.
Theodore Roosevelt
Whatever America hopes to bring to pass in the world must first come to pass in the heart of America.
Dwight D. Eisenhower
For this is what America is all about. It is the uncrossed desert and the unclimbed ridge. It is the star that is not reached and the harvest sleeping in the unplowed ground. Is our world gone? We say “Farewell.” Is the new world coming? We welcome it – and we will bend it to the hopes of man.
Lyndon B. Johnson
May God continue the unity of our country as the railroad unites the two great oceans of the world.
inscribed on the Golden Spike, Promontory Point, 1869
We shall send thanks to all the animal life in the world. They have many things to teach us as people. We are glad they are still here and we hope it will always be so.
Excerpt from the Thankgiving Address, Mohawk version
The cause of freedom is not the cause of a race or a sect, a party or a class – it is the cause of humankind, the very birthright of humanity.
Anna Julia Cooper
Every generation has the obligation to free men’s minds for a look at new worlds… to look out from a higher plateau than the last generation.
Ellison S. Onizuka
Canada is a loft over a really good party.
Robin Williams
(Okay, that last one is not in the US passport.)
Happy birthday America - and a belated happy birthday (July 1st) to the Great White North too!
