Today, as many in our society celebrates July 4th, ALA’s Office for Intellectual Freedom (OIF) reflects on words that have inspired us in the work that we do to preserve the right to read and the right to think for ourselves.

Each of us has chosen a quote, a lyric, a speech, a thought… an idea. We hope they speak to you as they have spoken to us.

 

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Jamie LaRue

“Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak; courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen.” ― Winston Churchill

 

Deborah Caldwell Stone

“Patriotism means to stand by the country. It does not mean to stand by the president or any other public official, save exactly to the degree in which he himself stands by the country. It is patriotic to support him insofar as he efficiently serves the country. It is unpatriotic not to oppose him to the exact extent that by inefficiency or otherwise he fails in his duty to stand by the country. In either event, it is unpatriotic not to tell the truth, whether about the president or anyone else.” ― Theodore Roosevelt

 

Kristin Pekoll

“America is the only country on the planet that since its birth has said over and over and over that we can do better.”

 

Ellie Diaz

 

Yumeka Brown

“Understand, democracy does not require uniformity.  Our founders quarreled and compromised, and expected us to do the same. But they knew that democracy does require a basic sense of solidarity – the idea that for all our outward differences, we are all in this together; that we rise or fall as one.” ― Barack Hussein Obama II (farewell speech)

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Celebrate thought, Celebrate freedom – today and everyday.

Jamie, Deborah, Kristin, Ellie and Yumeka