Roxane Gay Quotes

How I longed to see these things; how I longed to see the Liberty Bell and walk on the streets where Thomas Jefferson, Tom Paine and Benjamin Franklin had walked.

I'm so proud of myself. I thought, 'I've got to learn about American history.' I literally took two months off and watched every documentary known to man. I really didn't know Benjamin Franklin was so cool.

In January 1776, Thomas Paine issued 'Common Sense,' advocating independence from Great Britain.

Benjamin Franklin was probably America’s first juvenile delinquent.

The taverns were the headquarters of the American Revolution.

The gentleman asks, When were the colonies emancipated? I desire to know when they were made slaves? The profit to Great Britain from the trade of her colonies, through all its branches, is two millions a year. This is the price that America pays you for your protection;

The American Revolution was the grand operation, which seemed to be assigned by the Deity to the men of this age in our country, over and above the common duties of life

After being Washington's aide for four years and becoming the hero of Yorktown, Hamilton was viewed with a great deal of suspicion because of his association with Tories.

Fairfax was incredibly important to the shaping of the country.

As a student, I had stayed with Winston Churchill; later, I had lunched with Harold Macmillan - in fact, had met most of the post-war prime ministers of Great Britain from Douglas-Home to Tony Blair.

I do think there is a great deal of caricature around the House of Commons. It is just that kind of place.

With respect to the northeastern boundary of the United States, no official correspondence between this Government and that of Great Britain has passed since that communicated to Congress toward the close of their last session.

What began as a revolt in response to the King of Great Britain's repeated injuries against the colonies, soon became a passionate and glorious call to fight for the beginnings of a new country.

When we fled from the oppressions of kings and parliaments in Europe, to found this great Republic in America, we brought with us the laws and the liberties, which formed a part of our heritage as Britons.

The American Revolution was a beginning, not a consummation.

We would express to your Excellency the just Resentment which we feel at the Indignities offered to our worthy fellow Citizens in Boston and the frequent Violations of private property by the Soldiers under your Command. These Enormities committed by a Standing Army, in our opinion, unlawfully posted there in a time of Peace, are irritating in the greatest Degree, and if not remedied will endanger the involving all America in the Horrors of a civil War! Your Situation Sir is extremely critical. A rupture between the Inhabitants of the Province over which you preside and the Troops under your Command would produce Consequences of the most serious Nature: A Wound which would never be healed! It would probably establish Animosities between Great Britain & the Colonies which time would never eradicate!

United American Colonies

For what would it signify to risk our possessions and shed our blood to set ourselves free from the encroachments and oppression of Great Britain—with a certainty as soon as peace was settled with them of a more lasting war, a more unnatural, more bloody, and much more hopeless war, among the colonies themselves? Some of us consider ourselves as acting for posterity at present, having little expectation of living to see all things fully settled and the good consequences of liberty taking effect. But how much more uncertain the hope of seeing the internal contests of the colonies settled upon a lasting and equitable footing?

If the colonies are independent states, separate and disunited, after this war, we may be sure of coming off by the worse. We are in no condition to contend with several of them. Our trade in general, and our trade with them, must be upon such terms as they shall be pleased to prescribe. What will be the consequence of this? Will they not be ready to prefer putting themselves under the protection of Great Britain, France, or Holland, rather than submit to the tyranny of their neighbors, who were lately their equals? Nor would it be at all impossible that they should enter into such rash engagements as would prove their own destruction from a mixture of apprehended necessity and real resentment.

Happily for us, there was no church strong enough to dictate to the rest. Fortunately for us, the colonists not only, but the colonies differed widely in their religious views. There were the Puritans who hated the Episcopalians, and Episcopalians who hated the Catholics, and the Catholics who hated both, while the Quakers held them all in contempt. There they were, of every sort, and color and kind, and how was it that they came together? They had a common aspiration. They wanted to form a new nation. More than that, most of them cordially hated Great Britain; and they pledged each other to forget these religious prejudices, for a time at least, and agreed that there should be only one religion until they got through, and that was the religion of patriotism. They solemnly agreed that the new nation should not belong to any particular church, but that it should secure the rights of all.

… persons, whose design, from the beginning of their opposition to the Stamp Act, was to throw off all subordination and connection with Great Britain; who meant by every fiction, falsehood and fraud, to delude the people from their due allegiance, to throw the subsisting Governments into anarchy, to incite the ignorant and vulgar to arms, and with those arms to establish American Independence --- were Congregational and Presbyterian republicans, or men of bankrupt fortunes, overwhelmed in debt to the British merchants.

The American Revolution was a conservative revolution.

Before the American Revolution, the right to be secure against unreasonable searches and seizures had slight existence. British policies assaulted the privacy of dwellings and places of business, particularly when royal revenues were at stake.

The quarrel between the colonies and the British government seems to become more serious every day ... It may prove the most fatal blow to the authority of the metropolis.

Massachusetts developed America.