In honor of Independence Day, here are some quotes from our Founding Fathers — and one Founding Mother.

 • Independence is my happiness, and I view things as they are, without regard to place or person; my country is the world, and my religion is to do good.
• Whatever is my right as a man is also the right of another; and it becomes my duty to guarantee as well as to possess.
Thomas Paine

• A society that will trade a little liberty for a little order will lose both, and deserve neither.  
• I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than to those attending too small a degree of it.
• I have no fear that the result of our experiment will be that men may be trusted to govern themselves without a master.
• We hold these truths to be self evident: that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
— Thomas Jefferson

• My first wish is to see this plague of mankind, war, banished from the earth.
• There is nothing which can better deserve your patronage, than the promotion of science and literature. Knowledge is in every country the surest basis of public happiness.
• Liberty, when it begins to take root, is a plant of rapid growth.
• If the freedom of speech is taken away then dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep to the slaughter.
— George Washington

• Let us tenderly and kindly cherish therefore, the means of knowledge. Let us dare to read, think, speak, and write.”
• Let the human mind loose. It must be loose. It will be loose. Superstition and dogmatism cannot confine it.
— John Adams

• Do not put such unlimited power into the hands of the husbands. Remember all men would be tyrants if they could.
• If particular care and attention is not paid to the ladies, we are determined to foment a rebellion, and will not hold ourselves bound by any laws in which we have no voice or representation.
•If we mean to have Heroes, Statesmen and Philosophers, we should have learned women.
— Abigail Adams

Enjoy freedom on this Fourth of July!