“Our cause is just... our country will be grateful”

Declaration on taking up Arms in 1775. From the original manuscript draft in Dickinson's handwriting, which has given rise to the belief that he, not Jefferson (as formerly claimed), is the real author of this sentence.

Operation Homecoming celebration, (Feb. 12, 1973)

On the Correct Handling of Contradictions Among the People

Letter to friend Loren Hickerson (December 13, 1941)

from a speech at Stockholm, Is Woman Suffrage Progressing? quoted in "Not Just the Cleaning Lady: A Hygienist's Guide to Survival" by Cat Anne Schmidt (1997)

We gratefully acknowledge, as signal instances of the Divine favour towards us, that his Providence would not permit us to be called into this severe controversy, until we were grown up to our present strength, had been previously exercised in warlike operation, and possessed of the means of defending ourselves. With hearts fortified with these animating reflections, we most solemnly, before God and the world, declare that, exerting the utmost energy of those powers, which our beneficent Creator hath graciously bestowed upon us, the arms we have been compelled by our enemies to assume, we will, in defiance of every hazard, with unabating firmness and perseverence, employ for the preservation of our liberties; being with one mind resolved to die freemen rather than to live slaves.
Declaration of the Causes and Necessity of Taking Up Arms (1775); Jefferson composed the first draft of this document, but the final work was done by John Dickinson, working with his original draft. Full text online http://www.nationalcenter.org/1775DeclarationofArms.html
1770s

"Appeal to Compatriots" (1966)
1960's

If we do not turn the hearts of children toward knowledge and character, we will lose their gifts and undermine their idealism. If we permit our economy to drift and decline, the vulnerable will suffer most.
2000s, 2001, First inaugural address (January 2001)

2010s, 2016, July, (21 July 2016)