Declaration Of Independence Best Quotes

Well, in a world where so few of us are obliged to cook at all anymore, to choose to do so is to lodge a protest against specialization—against the total rationalization of life. Against the infiltration of commercial interests into every last cranny of our lives. To cook for the pleasure of it, to devote a portion of our leisure to it, is to declare our independence from the corporations seeking to organize our every waking moment into yet another occasion for consumption. (Come to think of it, our nonwaking moments as well: Ambien, anyone?) It is to reject the debilitating notion that, at least while we’re at home, production is work best done by someone else, and the only legitimate form of leisure is consumption. This dependence marketers call “freedom.

It was through the Declaration of Independence that we Americans acknowledged the eternal inequality of man. For by it we abolished a cut-and-dried aristocracy. We had seen little men artificially held up in high places, and great men artificially held down in low places, and our own justice-loving hearts abhorred this violence to human nature. Therefore, we decreed that every man should thenceforth have equal liberty to find his own level. By this very decree we acknowledged and gave freedom to true aristocracy, saying, "Let the best man win, whoever he is." Let the best man win! That is America's word. That is true democracy. And true democracy and true aristocracy are one and the same thing

Those men who laid the foundation of this American government and signed the Declaration of Independence were the best spirits the God of heaven could find on the face of the earth. They were choice spirits, not wicked men. General Washington and all the men who labored for the purpose were inspired of the Lord." Topics: independence, government

(Admirers of Jefferson might best be advised to skip everything he ever wrote about women and restrict their attention to the Declaration of Independence.)

To cook for the pleasure of it, to devote a portion of our leisure to it, is to declare our independence from the corporations seeking to organize our every waking moment into yet another occasion for consumption. (Come to think of it, our nonwaking moments as well: Ambien, anyone?) It is to reject the debilitating notion that, at least while we’re at home, production is work best done by someone else, and the only legitimate form of leisure is consumption. This dependence marketers call “freedom.” Cooking

We all know the story: how a defiant and undisciplined collection of citizen soldiers banded together to defeat the mightiest army on earth. But as those who lived through the nearly decadelong saga of the American Revolution were well aware, that was not how it actually happened. The real Revolution was so troubling and strange that once the struggle was over, a generation did its best to remove all traces of the truth. No one wanted to remember how after boldly declaring their independence they had so quickly lost their way; how patriotic zeal had lapsed into cynicism and self-interest; and how, just when all seemed lost, a traitor had saved them from themselves.

But the Almighty determines what is right!" "Must someone, some unseen thing, declare what is right for it to be right? I believe that my own morality - which answers only to my heart - is more sure and true than the morality of those who do right only because they fear retribution." "But that is the soul of the law," the king said, sounding confused. "If there is no punishment, there can only be chaos." "If there were no law, some men would do as they wish, yes," Jasnah said. "But isn't it remarkable that, given the chance for personal gain at the cost of others, so many people choose what is right?" "Because they fear the Almighty." "No," Jasnah said. "I think something innate in us understands that seeking the good of society is usually best for the individual as well. Humankind is noble, when we give it the chance to be. That nobility is something that exists independently of any god's decree.

The idea that humiliation is some capital crime of the spirit is a fiction. The sentences we hand down for losing control and succumbing to physical limits in life are arbitrary acts of self-loathing. All human beings have bodies that define their existence and which can veto the best-laid plans of the mind and soul.

In school we learn that one of the best survival strategies is being part of a clique . With our friends, we create a little, tiny world with codes for conduct, morality, dress, communication, ethnicity and sexuality. We then learn to judge everyone else who is not part of our little world by the standards that are acceptable to us. This is called "divide and conquer," and happens to be exactly how male, white patriarchal society operates. When you choose not to see how you, yourself, perpetuate this social model, your world assuredly becomes-or remains-small, "safe," persnickety, judgmental and uninspiring.

How can myths sustain entire empires? We have already discussed one such example: Peugeot. Now let’s examine two of the best-known myths of history: the Code of Hammurabi of c.1776 BC, which served as a cooperation manual for hundreds of thousands of ancient Babylonians; and the American Declaration of Independence of 1776 AD, which today still serves as a cooperation manual for hundreds of millions of modern Americans.

Nowhere in the Constitution of the United States or the Declaration of Independence or the Bill of Rights or the Emancipation Proclamation, the Old Testament or the New Testament, do you find the words ‘economy’ or ‘efficiency.’ Not that these two words are unimportant. But you discover other words like honesty, integrity, fairness, liberty, justice, love.… Words which describe what a government of human beings ought to be.

Steven Spielberg’s 2012 film Lincoln is dramatization at its best. It shows the president, played by Daniel Day-Lewis, trying to make good on the claim, in the Declaration of Independence, that all men are created equal: what more praiseworthy cause could a hedgehog possibly pursue? But to abolish slavery, Lincoln must move the Thirteenth Amendment through a fractious House of Representatives, and here his maneuvers are as foxy as they come. He resorts to deals, bribes, flattery, arm-twisting, and outright lies—so much so that the movie reeks, visually if not literally, of smoke-filled rooms. 27 When Thaddeus Stevens (Tommy Lee Jones) asks the president how he can reconcile so noble an aim with such malodorous methods, Lincoln recalls what his youthful years as a surveyor taught him: [A] compass . . . [will] point you true north from where you’re standing, but it’s got no advice about the swamps and deserts and chasms that you’ll encounter along the way. If in pursuit of your destination, you plunge ahead, heedless of obstacles, and achieve nothing more than to sink in a swamp . . . , [then] what’s the use of knowing true north? 28 I had the spooky sense, when I saw the film, that Berlin was sitting next to me, and at the conclusion of this scene leaned over to whisper triumphantly: “You see? Lincoln knows when to be a hedgehog (consulting the compass) and when a fox (skirting the swamp)!

The United States had been created through an act of disloyalty. No matter how eloquently the Declaration of Independence had attempted to justify the American rebellion, a residual guilt hovered over the circumstances of the country's founding. Arnold changed all that. By threatening to destroy the newly created republic through, ironically, his own betrayal, Arnold gave this nation of traitors the greatest of gifts; a myth of creation. The American people had come to revere George Washington, but a hero alone was not sufficient to bring them together. Now they had the despised villain Benedict Arnold. They knew both what they were fighting for - and against. The story of American's genesis could finally move beyond the break with the mother country and start to focus on the process by which thirteen former colonies could become a nation. As Arnold had demonstrated, the real enemy was not Great Britain, but those Americans who sought to undercut their fellow citizens commitment to one another. Whether it was Joseph Reed's willingness to promote his state's interests at the expenses of what was best for the country as a whole or Arnold's decision to sell his loyalty to the highest bidder, the greatest danger to America's future cam from self-serving opportunism masquerading as patriotism. At this fragile state in the country's development, a way had to be found to strengthen rather than destroy the existing framework of government. The Continental Congress was far from perfect, but it offered a start to what could one day be a great nation. By turning traitor, Arnold had alerted the American people to how close they had all come to betraying the Revolution by putting their own interests ahead of their newborn country's. Already the name Benedict Arnold was becoming a byword for that most hateful of crimes: treason against the people of the United States.

These are things like Michael Jackson's Thriller, an album that was (1) produced by Quincy Jones, (2) features guitar playing by Eddie Van Halen, (3) includes at least three singles that ooze awesomeness, and (4) has the single best bass line from the entire 1980s (i.e., the opening of "Billie Jean"). It is a "guilty pleasure," presumably, because 45 million people liked it, and because Jackson is quite possibly a pedophile, a d because two dancers had a really unfair knife fight in the video for "Beat It." This is akin to considering Thomas Jefferson a "guilty pleasure" among presidents because he briefly owned a pet bear. I mean, he still wrote the fucking Declaration of Independence, you know?

They didn't do things the way you would have. They're not you. That's what their declaration-of-independence rants were all about,when you used to fight, and why they kept telling us they want to do it their way.....Well, now, I get to do it my way......Well, now, I get to do it my way...And you know what? It's fun!...I can do anything I damn well please. It's called freedom. And I earned every minute of it. And that's the best feeling in the world. To me, that's our long-delayed reward for decades of hands-on parenting. And for the tape running through the backs of our minds, in mommy lobe, for the rest of our lives...Because it's really about being a woman at the wheel. We're always moving ahead. Enjoy the trip.

It was through the Declaration of Independence that we Americans acknowledged the eternal quality of man. For by it we abolished a cut-and-dried aristocracy. We had seen little men artificially held up in high places, and great men artificially held down in low places, and our own justice-loving hearts abhorred this violence to human nature. Therefore, we decreed that every man should thenceforth have equal liberty to find his own level. By this very decree we acknowledged and gave freedom to true aristocracy, saying, "Let the best man win, whoever he is." Let the best man win! That is America's word. That is true democracy. And true democracy and true aristocracy are one and the same thing. If anybody cannot see this, so much the worse for his eyesight.

It was through the Declaration of Independence that we Americans acknowledged the ETERNAL INEQUALITY of man. For by it we abolished a cut-and-dried aristocracy. We had seen little men artificially held up in high places, and great men artificially held down in low places, and our own justice-loving hearts abhorred this violence to human nature. Therefore, we decreed that every man should thenceforth have equal liberty to find his own level. By this very decree we acknowledged and gave freedom to true aristocracy, saying, "Let the best man win, whoever he is." Let the best man win! That is America's word. That is true democracy. And true democracy and true aristocracy are one and the same thing. If anybody cannot see this, so much the worse for his eyesight.

A powerful example of this is seen in the first war of Indian independence, also known as the Sepoy Mutiny, of 1857. Indian soldiers—sepoys—serving in the British East India Company’s army rebelled when it became known that the bullets they were issued were greased in either tallow, derived from cows, or lard, from pigs—major offenses to the Hindu and Muslim soldiers, respectively. Mind you, this was not the British colonial overlords doing something offensive to the core cultural values of either group—for example, declaring Allah a false prophet or banning polytheistic worship. Virtually every culture on earth has food prohibitions, often pretty arbitrary ones meant to merely signal core values (kosher laws for Orthodox Jews, for example, revolve around zoological arcana about whether a species has a cloven hoof) but that eventually gain a huge power. Before it was over, the Sepoy Mutiny killed more than 100,000 Indians.

There can be no doubt of this: All America is divided into two classes--the quality and the equality. The latter will always recognize the former when mistaken for it. Both will be with us until our women bear nothing but kings. It was through the Declaration of Independence that we Americans acknowledged the ETERNAL INEQUALITY of man. For by it we abolished a cut-and-dried aristocracy. We had seen little men artificially held up in high places, and great men artificially held down in low places, and our own justice-loving hearts abhorred this violence to human nature. Therefore, we decreed that every man should thenceforth have equal liberty to find his own level. By this very decree we acknowledged and gave freedom to true aristocracy, saying, "Let the best man win, whoever he is." Let the best man win! That is America's word. That is true democracy. And true democracy and true aristocracy are one and the same thing. If anybody cannot see this, so much the worse for his eyesight.

The framers were wise in their generation and wanted to do the very best possible to secure their own liberty and independence, and that also of their descendants to the latest days. It is preposterous to suppose that the people of one generation can lay down the best and only rules of government for all who are to come after them, and under unforeseen contingencies. At the time of the framing of our constitution the only physical forces that had been subdued and made to serve man and do his labor, were the currents in the streams and in the air we breathe. Rude machinery, propelled by water power, had been invested sails to propel ships upon the waters and been set to catch the passing breeze – but the application of steam to propel vessels against both wind and current, and machinery to do all manner of work had not been thought of. The instantaneous transmission of messages around the world by means of electricity would probably that day have been attribute to witchcraft or a league with the Devil. Immaterial circumstances had changed as greatly as material ones. We could not and ought not to be rigidly bound by the rules laid down under circumstances so different for emergencies so utterly unanticipated. The fathers themselves would have been the first to declare that their prerogatives were not irrevocable.

We might label this the Hobbesean fallacy: the idea that human beings were primordially individualistic and that they entered into society at a later stage in their development only as a result of a rational calculation that social cooperation was the best way for them to achieve their individual ends. This premise of primordial individualism underpins the understanding of rights contained in the American Declaration of Independence and thus of the democratic political community that springs from it. This premise also underlies contemporary neoclassical economics, which builds its models on the assumption that human beings are rational beings who want to maximize their individual utility or incomes. But it is in fact individualism and not sociability that developed over the course of human history. That individualism seems today like a solid core of our economic and political behavior is only because we have developed institutions that override our more naturally communal instincts. Aristotle was more correct than these early modern liberal theorists when he said that human beings were political by nature. So while an individualistic understanding of human motivation may help to explain the activities of commodity traders and libertarian activists in present-day America, it is not the most helpful way to understand the early evolution of human politics. Everything

Kennewick Man is a skeleton discovered in Washington State in 1996, carbon-dated to older than 9,000 years. Anthropologists were intrigued by anatomical suggestions that he might be unrelated to typical Native Americans, and therefore might represent a separate early migration across what is now the Bering Strait, or even from Iceland. They were preparing to do all-important DNA tests when the legal authorities seized the skeleton, intending to hand it over to representatives of local Indian tribes, who proposed to bury it and forbid all further study. Naturally there was widespread opposition from the scientific and archaeological community. Even if Kennewick Man is an American Indian of some kind, it is highly unlikely that his affinities lie with whichever particular tribe happens to live in the same area 9,000 years later. Native Americans have impressive legal muscle, and ‘The Ancient One’ might have been handed over to the tribes, but for a bizarre twist. The Asatru Folk Assembly, a group of worshippers of the Norse gods Thor and Odin, filed an independent legal claim that Kennewick Man was actually a Viking. This Nordic sect, whose views you may follow in the Summer 1997 issue of The Runestone, were actually allowed to hold a religious service over the bones. This upset the Yakama Indian community, whose spokesman feared that the Viking ceremony could be ‘keeping Kennewick Man’s spirit from finding his body’. The dispute between Indians and Norsemen could well be settled by DNA comparison, and the Norsemen are quite keen to be put to this test. Scientific study of the remains would certainly cast fascinating light on the question of when humans first arrived in America. But Indian leaders resent the very idea of studying this question, because they believe their ancestors have been in America since the creation. As Armand Minthorn, religious leader of the Umatilla tribe, put it: ‘From our oral histories, we know that our people have been part of this land since the beginning of time. We do not believe our people migrated here from another continent, as the scientists do.’ Perhaps the best policy for the archaeologists would be to declare themselves a religion, with DNA fingerprints their sacramental totem. Facetious but, such is the climate in the United States at the end of the twentieth century, it is possibly the only recourse that would work.

Otherwise we run the risk of failing God in the one thing that so greatly determined His choice of us; and in failing God, we shall fail ourselves. Find your personal worth in your special calling from God Our Christian vocation carries responsibility, but it has its compensations, too. One such compensation is the wholesome feeling of personal worth that should be mine. If I am important to God, I am indeed an important person. Other people may not rate me very highly. My talents may be quite limited, and to those who know me, I may be just an average sort of person. My job may be a relatively humble one, and I may be tempted to feel inferior as I see others around me making their mark in the world. Then I remember that money, position, and popularity - all the yardsticks by which the world measures success - are to God nothing more than a child's playthings. Eventually they must be cast aside and left behind. In the meantime, if I am in a state of grace and am following God's will as my road map through life, then every least action of mine has an everlasting value. However lowly the world may esteem me, every breath I draw is precious to God. Speaking again in human terms, God made me because He needs me. There is something that has to be done that only I can do. What greater personal worth could there be than to be needed by God? It matters little that I do not know the nature of my essential role in God's plan. It is enough to know that I am as valuable to God as the most distinguished person the world has ever acclaimed. This sense of personal worth is not pride. It is not even vanity. Pride consists in declaring my independence of God, as though I alone were responsible for whatever merit I possess. Vanity is simply a silly preoccupation with God's lesser natural gifts, such as looks or talents. It would not be humility - it would be a belittling of God's wisdom and goodness - to pretend that I do not amount to much, that my life is meaningless, that I would never have been missed if I had not been born. It is quite true that apart from God I am nothing. It is just as true that God's love has made me great. To admit this is to do simple justice to God. I must never surrender to the temptation to think, "I am no good. I am a failure." Neither must I surrender - ever - to self-pity; to the feeling that nobody loves me, nobody cares about me. How awful it would be, after all the love God has expended and is expending on me, to brood and sorrow because I do not receive as much human love as I might wish. That would be about as silly as the complaint of a millionaire at not winning on the penny slot machine. A self-pitying person can only be one who is weak in faith or ignorant in religion. God's love for me is such a tremendous thing! From my sense of Christian vocation there follows another effect: freedom from serious worry. If I really believe that God loves me with an infinite love (as He does) and that He wants what is best for me (as He does), I cannot worry very long or very intensely. God is infinitely wise; He always knows what is best. God is infinitely powerful; He can accomplish anything

The guns on both sides were silent until they returned. Suddenly, a fierce cannonade from the British ships exploded onto the beach at Turtle Gut Inlet, but only one American was hit, “Shott through the arm and body.” It was Richard Wickes. A cannonball took his arm and half his chest away. Fresh from the Reprisal, Lambert Wickes arrived on the beach at the head of his reinforcements just as his younger brother died: “I arrived just at the Close of the Action Time enough to see him expire . . . Captn Barry . . . says a braver Man never existed.”123 Taking Richard Wickes's body, the American sailors left the spit of sand they fought over that morning. The powder was stowed in the Wasp's hold and sent up the Delaware. “At 2 weighed and made Sail,” Hudson briefly noted in his journal.124 The British returned to Cape Henlopen. As before, Barry had taken long odds, assessed the best plan that could succeed, and beaten the British. The Nancy was destroyed, but the Wasp would reach Philadelphia safely with the desperately needed gunpowder. Despite superior firepower, the “butcher's bill” was far heavier for the British. But the victory brought no cheers or satisfaction among the Americans, and Barry was particularly saddened by the death of the gallant young Wickes.125 The next morning—Sunday, June 30—the men of the Lexington and Reprisal gathered to mourn their shipmate at the log meetinghouse in the small village of Cold Spring, just north of Cape May. Under the same light breezes of the day before, the American sailors, with “bowed and uncovered heads,” filed inside and sat on the long, rough-cut wooden pews. After “The Clergyman preached a very deacent Sermon,” Lambert Wickes and the Reprisal's officers silently hoisted the coffin. Shuffling under its weight, they carried it outside to the little cemetery, and laid their comrade to rest.126 Lambert Wickes now faced the task of informing his family in Maryland of Richard's death. On July 2, in a sad but disjointed letter to his brother Samuel, he mentioned Richard's death among a list of the items—including the sugar and “one Bagg Coffee” that accompanied the letter. “You'll disclose this Secret with as much Caution as possible to our Sisters,” he pleaded. He quoted Barry's report that Richard “fought like a brave Man & was fore most in every transaction of that day,” dying for the cause of the “united Colonies.”127 By the time Lambert's package reached his family in Maryland, the “united Colonies” ceased to exist as well. The same day Wickes posted his letter, Congress approved the Declaration of Independence. Barry, Wickes, and the rest of the Continental Navy were now fighting for the survival of a new country: the United States of America.

I wouldn’t say that I have nothing to believe in, Your Majesty. Actually, I have much to believe in. My brother and my uncle, my own abilities. The things I was taught by my parents.” “But, what is right and wrong, you’ve … Well, you’ve discarded that.” “Just because I do not accept the teachings of the devotaries does not mean I’ve discarded a belief in right and wrong.” “But the Almighty determines what is right!” “Must someone, some unseen thing, declare what is right for it to be right? I believe that my own morality—which answers only to my heart—is more sure and true than the morality of those who do right only because they fear retribution.” “But that is the soul of law,” the king said, sounding confused. “If there is no punishment, there can be only chaos.” “If there were no law, some men would do as they wish, yes,” Jasnah said. “But isn’t it remarkable that, given the chance for personal gain at the cost of others, so many people choose what is right?” “Because they fear the Almighty.” “No,” Jasnah said. “I think something innate in us understands that seeking the good of society is usually best for the individual as well. Humankind is noble, when we give it the chance to be. That nobility is something that exists independent of any god’s decree.” “I just don’t see how anything could be outside God’s decrees.” The king shook his head, bemused. “Brightness Jasnah, I don’t mean to argue, but isn’t the very definition of the Almighty that all things exist because of him?” “If you add one and one, that makes two, does it not?” “Well, yes.” “No god needs declare it so for it to be true,” Jasnah said. “So, could we not say that mathematics exists outside the Almighty, independent of him?” “Perhaps.” “Well,” Jasnah said, “I simply claim that morality and human will are independent of him too.” “If you say that,” the king said, chuckling, “then you’ve removed all purpose for the Almighty’s existence!” “Indeed.

I rise, Mr President, for the purpose of announcing to the Senate that I have satisfactory evidence that the State of Mississippi, by a solemn ordinance of her people in convention assembled, has declared her separation from the United States. Under these circumstances, of course, my functions terminate here. It has seemed to me proper, however, that I should appear in the Senate to announce that fact to my associates, and I will say but very little more.” His voice faltered at the outset, but soon it gathered volume and rang clear—“like a silver trumpet,” according to his wife, who sat in the gallery. “Unshed tears were in it,” she added, “and a plea for peace permeated every tone.” Davis continued: “It is known to senators who have served with me here, that I have for many years advocated, as an essential attribute of State sovereignty, the right of a State to secede from the Union.… If I had thought that Mississippi was acting without sufficient provocation … I should still, under my theory of government, because of my allegiance to the State of which I am a citizen, have been bound by her action.” He foresaw the founding of a nation, inheritor of the traditions of the American Revolution. “We but tread in the paths of our fathers when we proclaim our independence and take the hazard … not in hostility to others, not to injure any section of the country, not even for our own pecuniary benefit, but from the high and solemn motive of defending and protecting the rights we inherited, and which it is our duty to transmit unshorn to our children.” England had been a lion; the Union might turn out to be a bear; in which case, “we will invoke the God of our fathers, who delivered them from the power of the lion, to protect us from the ravages of the bear; and thus, putting our trust in God and in our own firm hearts and strong arms, we will vindicate the right as best we may.

Huygens, best known as the first great horologist, swore he arrived at the idea for the pendulum clock independently of Galileo. And indeed he evinced a deeper understanding of the physics of pendulum swings—and the problem of keeping them going at a constant rate—when he built his first pendulum-regulated clock in 1656. Two years later Huygens published a treatise on its principles, called the Horologium, in which he declared his clock a fit instrument for establishing longitude at sea. By 1660, Huygens had completed not one but two marine timekeepers based on his principles.

Even while attaching, our toddlers are motivated by an internal clock that drives them to become more independent and autonomous! A challenge under the best of circumstance, adopted toddlers need special help finding appropriate declarations of independence. We have to surround our children with love that claims, but doesn’t repress appropriate development.

We might label this the Hobbesean fallacy: the idea that human beings were primordially individualistic and that they entered into society at a later stage in their development only as a result of a rational calculation that social cooperation was the best way for them to achieve their individual ends. This premise of primordial individualism underpins the understanding of rights contained in the American Declaration of Independence and thus of the democratic political community that springs from it. This premise also underlies contemporary neoclassical economics, which builds its models on the assumption that human beings are rational beings who want to maximize their individual utility or incomes. But it is in fact individualism and not sociability that developed over the course of human history. That individualism seems today like a solid core of our economic and political behavior is only because we have developed institutions that override our more naturally communal instincts.

But the fourth of July is an American holiday.” I wrinkled my nose at Wilson. “What in the world are a bunch of Brits doing celebrating Independence Day?” “Who do you think celebrates more when the child moves out, the parents or the kid? England was glad to see you all go, trust me. We threw a party when America declared their independence. Bravo! Now go, and don't let the door hit you in the arse!” Wilson growled. “I'm not buying it. Does the Revolutionary war ring any bells, Mr. Professor?” “All right then. Actually, Mum is in town, along with Alice and Peter and my three nephews. It's too blasted hot to barbeque, but Tiffa's flat has an amazing view of the strip – so the fireworks are brilliant – and best of all, there's a pool on the roof.

The best account of events in Pennsylvania leading up to the Declaration of Independence is found in David Freeman Hawke, In the Midst of a Revolution (1961; reprint, Westport,Conn., 1980).

There is a powerful difference between picturing an image that does not relate to you, and recalling something specific that you are connected with. When memory experts memorize something that is idle or vain, they’re only attempting to picture an image that does not relate to them. They don’t have to daily apply the digits of mathematical pi to live by them. They don’t have to apply the Declaration of Independence in a practical day to day life. As if Americans say when living life, “As it is written in the Declaration of Independence.” So they teach you how to memorize things idly, where as it is better to make a heartfelt connection with the word of God. Therefore Beloved, read the scriptures first and have a full connection with it before you memorize. As we stated before, it is good to memorize what is speaking out to you in the scriptures. Where God is speaking to you and teaching you in the word is the best place to memorize. It makes an emotional connection with you, and it’s applicable to your life in the here and now. Seeing that it is immediately applicable to your life you’ll be able to make an emotional connection with what you are memorizing. As a result, when you are past these teachings and have full understanding, even years in the future you’ll still remember the scripture because it made an emotional connection with you. Much like reminiscing over the cottage experience, every time the topic is brought up you’ll have waves of scripture rushing to you for practical application. Therefore in this method we are seeking to make memorizing the scriptures an experience and not merely a task or a goal for godliness. When it is relevant to experiences there is more for the mind to grasp onto the memory with thereby giving greater longevity to the memory itself. Similar to the peg method where you create an image for the mind to have more to grasp onto, you are using an already existing “image” so to speak, that the mind will grasp onto harder. But why does it grasp harder? Because it isn’t something silly thought of by oneself but it is an ongoing experience that led to a reminiscent memory. Therefore memorize what God is speaking to you and what has strong meaning to you. Whatever jumps out at you from the pages is what the Lord wants you to be memorizing. Therefore as a good pupil and good student, memorize what the Lord your Teacher is giving you to memorize. In school we do not memorize anything but what the teacher gives us, otherwise it would serve no purpose. Likewise it serves a greater purpose to memorize what God is giving you in the here and now, versus memorizing something that is not applying to you at this moment. Yes, all the word of God applies to your life and it always will. But certain things are speaking true to the immediate lesson in life and thus the scriptures speak out to you, and seem alive. Therefore memorize the words that are alive and you will have a continuous living memory of the word of God.

When Patrick Henry warned his colleagues at the Richmond ratification convention that “the language of We the People, instead of We, the States,” signaled “an alarming transition, from a confederacy to a consolidated government,” James Madison coolly answered that this was among the Constitution’s best features.6 The Articles had been based on “the dependent derivative authority of the legislatures of the states,” he said, but the Constitution would draw its authority “from the superior power of the people.”7 Although it did not consolidate the states in every way, the Constitution, once ratified, would create “a government established by the thirteen States of America, not through the intervention of the Legislatures, but by the people at large.

Castine is a quiet town with a population of about 1,500 people in Western Hancock County, Maine, named after John Hancock, when Maine was a part of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. He was the famous statesman, merchant and smuggler who signed the “Declaration of Independence” with a signature large enough so that the English monarch, King George, could read it without glasses. Every child in New England knows that John Hancock was a prominent activist and patriot during the colonial history of the United States and not just the name of a well-known Insurance Company. Just below the earthen remains of Fort George, on both sides of Pleasant Street, lays the campus of Maine Maritime Academy. Prior to World War II, this location was the home of the Eastern State Normal School, whose purpose was to train grade school teachers. Maine Maritime Academy has significantly grown over the years and is now a four-year college that graduates officers and engineers for the United States Merchant Marine, as well as educating students in marine-related industries such as yacht and small craft management. Bachelor Degrees are offered in Engineering, International Business and Logistics, Marine Transportation, and Ocean Studies. Graduate studies are offered in Global Logistics and Maritime Management, as well as in International Logistics Management. Presently there are approximately 1,030 students enrolled at the Academy. Maine Maritime Academy's ranking was 7th in the 2016 edition of Best Northern Regional Colleges by U.S. News and World Report. The school was named the Number One public college in the United States by Money Magazine. Photo Caption: Castine, Maine

The first thing you have to remember is that we count the days a bit differently. Having 39.6 more minutes each day, and 669 days—or sols, as we call ’em—in a sidereal period, meant that aresians threw out both Greenwich Mean Time and the Gregorian calendar in a.d. 2032, long before the Pax Astra took control of the near-space colonies, way before Mars declared its independence. The Zubrin calendar has twelve months, ranging from 48 to 66 sols in length, each named after a Zodiac constellation; it retroactively began on January 1, 1961, which became Gemini 1, m.y. 1 by local reckoning. The conversion factors from Gregorian to Zubrin calendars are fairly complex, so don’t ask for an explanation here; best to say that one of the first things newcomers from Earth have to realize is that April Fool pranks are even less funny at Arsia Station than they were back in Indiana.

Must someone, some unseen thing, declare what is right for it to be right? I believe that my own morality—which answers only to my heart—is more sure and true than the morality of those who do right only because they fear retribution.” “But that is the soul of law,” the king said, sounding confused. “If there is no punishment, there can be only chaos.” “If there were no law, some men would do as they wish, yes,” Jasnah said. “But isn’t it remarkable that, given the chance for personal gain at the cost of others, so many people choose what is right?” “Because they fear the Almighty.” “No,” Jasnah said. “I think something innate in us understands that seeking the good of society is usually best for the individual as well. Humankind is noble, when we give it the chance to be. That nobility is something that exists independent of any god’s decree.” “I just don’t see how anything could be outside God’s decrees.” The king shook his head, bemused. “Brightness Jasnah, I don’t mean to argue, but isn’t the very definition of the Almighty that all things exist because of him?” “If you add one and one, that makes two, does it not?” “Well, yes.” “No god needs declare it so for it to be true,” Jasnah said. “So, could we not say that mathematics exists outside the Almighty, independent of him?” “Perhaps.” “Well,” Jasnah said, “I simply claim that morality and human will are independent of him too.” “If you say that,” the king said, chuckling, “then you’ve removed all purpose for the Almighty’s existence!” “Indeed.

Frederic Morrow, adviser to the Commerce Department and later the first Black man to hold an executive position at the White House, commented that most of the white secretaries in the office steno pool refused to work for him, even as he was routinely insulted and sidelined by the administration supposedly soliciting his opinion. He would go on to become the first Black vice president of Bank of America and write several books, including Black Man in the White House. Claire’s other employer, Senator Margaret Chase Smith from Maine, is an equally impressive historical figure. A lone voice to speak out on the Senate floor against McCarthy, she delivered the famous Declaration of Conscience outlining four basic principles of Americanism: the right to criticize, to hold unpopular beliefs, to protest, and to hold independent thought. An enraged McCarthy did his best to destroy her, but she outlasted him, remaining a senator until 1973. It was remarked that if a man had delivered the Declaration of Conscience, he would have been the next president. Arlene

On 2 November 1917, five weeks before Allenby walked through the Jaffa Gate, the government in London had issued a document that was to have a fateful and lasting impact on the Holy Land, the Middle East and the world. The foreign secretary, Lord Balfour, wrote to Lord Rothschild, representing the World Zionist Organization, to inform him that: His Majesty’s government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country. The sixty-seven typewritten words of the Balfour Declaration combined considerations of imperial planning, wartime propaganda, biblical resonances and a colonial mindset, as well as evident sympathy for the Zionist idea. With them, as the writer Arthur Koestler was to quip memorably – neatly encapsulating the attendant and continuing controversy – ‘one nation solemnly promised to a second nation the country of a third’.8 Lloyd George highlighted sympathy for the Jews as his principal motivation. But the decisive calculations were political, primarily the wish to outsmart the French in post-war arrangements in the Levant9 and the impulse to use Palestine’s strategic location – its ‘fatal geography’ – to protect Egypt, the Suez Canal and the route to India.10 Other judgements have placed greater emphasis on the need to mobilize Jewish public opinion behind the then flagging Allied war effort. As Balfour told the war cabinet at its final discussion of the issue on 31 October: ‘If we could make a declaration favourable to such an ideal [Zionism], we should be able to carry on extremely useful propaganda both in Russia and in America.’11 Historians have spent decades debating the connections and contradictions between Balfour’s public pledge to the Zionists, the secret 1916 Sykes–Picot agreement between Britain, France and Russia about post-war spheres of influence in the Middle East, and pledges about Arab independence made by the British in 1915 to encourage Sharif Hussein of Mecca to launch his ‘revolt in the desert’ against the Turks. The truth, buried in imprecise definitions, misunderstandings and duplicity, remains elusive.

I believe in travel. I believe that by disorienting us, it rearranges us. Travel builds character and ignites imagination, nurtures independence and humility, catalyzes curiosity and self-examination. It can be a bulwark against stagnation, and a call to action. It widens our worldview and brings us face-to-face with our privilege, as it forces us to reassess entrenched beliefs and long-held concepts. Of course, travel is no magical elixir. I've stopped believing it's 'fatal to prejudice,' as Mark Twain famously declared (if only it were that simple), but I do hold that it's a solid start toward upending our biases and assumptions, because it compels us to see beyond the abstractions of a foreign land to its humanity. But travel has a shadow side, too: there's the environmental impact of flying and cruising, the crowding of our planet's most wondrous places, the littering of sacred sites, the pricing-out of locals. And it has dreadful roots (colonialism, capitalism) and gruesome side effects (exploitation, exoticism, saviorism). I wrestle with this duality. How do I reconcile the damage travel does with the awareness that it profoundly enriches my life; that it is not only my livelihood but also, at time, my sanity? It's another area in which I get hopelessly lost. And while I may never navigate this ethical tangle, I recognize that travel itself is what helps me make sense of - or at least pay more attention to - a world both exquisite and unbearably cruel.

There’s one response among the dozens that I’ve come to think best answers the question, a declarative sentence in the public record that is equal parts truth and defiance. It’s a statement that betrays a secret at the same time. There’s something both bold and hidden in the response. Something beautiful and independent, mysterious and brave. There is escape between the words. Escape from abuse and oppression. Escape from age and obligation. It ends with a period that might as well be a question mark, four words that launch a thousand ships, and it’s an answer that frustrates and satisfies. “Because,” she told a reporter, “I wanted to.

American WOMEN are the best football players in the world. The need to declare our independence and our dominance resonated with the entire team.

Key Elements of Five Year Plan ’77 What follows did not happen overnight. Among the guidelines set in February 1977 (remember, Fair Trade on alcohol was not finally ended until 1978): Emphasize edibles vs. non-edibles. I figured that the supermarkets would raise their prices on foods to make up for the newly reduced margins on milk and alcohol. This would give us all the more room to underprice them. During the next five years we got rid of film, hosiery, light bulbs and hardware, greeting cards, batteries, magazines, all health and beauty aids except those with a “health food” twist. We began to cut back sharply on soaps and cleaners and paper goods. The only non-edibles we emphasized were “tabletop” items like wineglasses, cork pullers, and candles. It was quite clear that we should put more emphasis on food and less on alcohol and milk. Within edibles, drop all ordinary branded products like Best Foods, Folgers, or Weber’s bread. I felt that a dichotomy was developing between “groceries” and “food.” By “groceries,” I mean the highly advertised, highly packaged, “value added” products being emphasized by supermarkets, the kinds that brought slotting allowances and co-op advertising allowances. By embracing these “plastic” products, I felt the supermarkets were abandoning “food” and the product knowledge required to buy and sell it. But this position wasn’t entirely altruistic. The plan of February 20, 1977, declared, “Most independent supermarkets have been driven out of business, because they stupidly tried to compete with the big chains in plastic goods, in which the big chains excel.” Focus on discontinuity of supplies. Be willing to discontinue any product if we are unable to offer the right deal to the customer. Instead of national brands, focus on either Trader Joe’s label products or “no label” products like nuts and dried fruits. This was intended to enable the Trader Joe’s label to pick up momentum in the stores. And it worked.

It is impossible to grant someone happiness. The best you can do, as the Declaration of Independence put it, is to give him the freedom to pursue happiness. Happiness is not a tangible thing, it's byproduct of achievement.

The real Revolution was so troubling and strange that once the struggle was over, a generation did its best to remove all traces of the truth. No one wanted to remember how after boldly declaring their independence they had so quickly lost their way; how patriotic zeal had lapsed into cynicism and self-interest; and how, just when all seemed lost, a traitor had saved them from themselves.

Thomas Jefferson, who in the Declaration of Independence gave us the lofty ideal that all men are created equal even as he owned slaves to the end of his life, pointed the nation west toward its manifest destiny with the Louisiana Purchase and applied the principles of scientific thought as he strived for the best policies to benefit the nation and its people.

To maximize your life you must declare independence from the opinions of others.

United States is the first nation in the world to declare its independence, not because of any particular qualities or merits of its own, but because of rights which it shared with all men everywhere. In so doing, it declared the ground of "government of the people, by the people, for the people" in a sense absolutely unprecedented. In so doing, it laid an equally unprecedented claim to the character of the best regime of Western civilization.

The seventeenth of September, 1787,” doesn’t quite have the same ring to it as the Fourth of July, 1776, but that was the day they signed the final draft of the Constitution, and it’s actually more sacred in many ways. Any band of revolutionaries can declare independence. Only one was able to invent a government and a legal system that realized the ideas represented by the constellation. It really ought to be remembered as America’s Interdependence Day.

Those protesters who “sat down at lunch counters … were in reality standing up for the best in the American dream” and “bringing our nation back to those great wells of democracy which were dug deep by the founding fathers in their formulation of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence.

We learned from Fen’s mistakes. We’re not attacking Navarre like he did or declaring independence. We’re fighting right under their noses, and we have a plan. Something killed off the venin six hundred years ago during the Great War, and we’re actively searching for that weapon. Forging the daggers will keep us in the fight long enough to find it, as long as we can get that luminary. We might not be ready now, but we will be once Navarre catches on.” His tone isn’t exactly convincing. I take a step back. “With what army? How many of you are there in this revolution?” How many will die this time? “It’s best if you don’t know specifics—” He tenses, then reaches for me again. “I’ve already put you in danger by telling you too much. At least until you can shield Aetos out.