It’s time for America’s 250th birthday and that has us thinking about where we are, where we’ve been and, most importantly, where we want to go as one big American family.
Our shared history is filled with ups and downs, tangible progress and delayed equality. In those times where we weren’t sure where we’re going, or maybe forgotten who we’re called to be, icons of American life have stepped up and spoken out to keep us on track.
In honor of America’s 250th, we’re highlighting some of our favorites — the people, the words, and the inspiration who can help keep us working toward that more perfect union. Happy birthday, America!
Pauli Murray
Civil Rights activist, legal scholar, and Episcopal priest
“In not a single one of these little campaigns was I victorious. In other words, in each case, I personally failed, but I have lived to see the thesis upon which I was operating vindicated. And what I very often say is that I’ve lived to see my lost causes found.”
Learn more: The Spiritual Legacy of Pauli Murray
John Lewis
Civil Rights activist and former U.S. Representative for Georgia’s 5th District
“Freedom is not a state; it is an act… Freedom is the continuous action we all must take, and each generation must do its part to create an even more fair, more just society.”
Sandra Day O’Connor
Former U.S. Supreme Court Justice
“We [Americans] don’t accomplish in this world alone … and whatever happens is the result of the whole tapestry of one’s life and all the weavings of individual threads from one to another that creates something,”
Abraham Lincoln
16th President of the United States
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal. …That is the electric cord in the Declaration that links the hearts of patriotic and liberty-loving men together, that will link those patriotic hearts as long as the love of freedom exists in the minds of men throughout the world.”
John Dewey
Philosopher, psychologist, and educator
“To cooperate by giving differences a chance to show themselves because of the belief that the expression of difference is not only a right of the other persons but is a means of enriching one’s own life-experience, is inherent in the democratic personal way of life.”
![[John Dewey, 1859-1952, bust portrait, facing left]](https://www.interfaithamerica.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/service-pnp-cph-3a50000-3a51000-3a51500-3a51565r.jpg)
Audre Lorde
Civil Rights activist, professor, and poet
“Too often, we pour the energy needed for recognizing and exploring difference into pretending those differences are insurmountable barriers, or that they do not exist at all. This results in a voluntary isolation or false and treacherous connections. Either way, we do not develop tools for using human difference as a springboard for creative change within our lives.”
Langston Hughes
Poet and activist
“Freedom
Is a strong seed
Planted
In a great need.”
Fred Rogers
TV personality, educator, and Presbyterian minister
“We’re all on a journey – each of us. And if we can be sensitive to the person who happens to be our neighbor, that, to me, is the greatest challenge as well as the greatest pleasure.”
Ronald Reagan
40th President of the United States
“We Americans are bound together not by common ancestry, but by our common blessing of freedom.”
Maya Angelou
Civil Rights activist, professor, and writer
“History, despite its wrenching pain cannot be unlived, but if faced with courage need not be lived again.”
Learn more: Pluralism Hero: Maya Angelou
