Millions of words have been written and spoken on the values that have sustained American independence. And the body of thought keeps growing.

This Fourth of July, in lieu of an editorial, The Spokesman-Review offers you a sampling of observations that have been rendered, currently and over the years, about freedom and democracy.

“The first act of freedom is to choose it.”

– Psychologist and author Rollo May, describing the beliefs of American philosopher William James.

“Civil rights leaders throughout this country did what they did and died, so my generation has full responsibility to walk in the doors those brave people opened.”

– Retired business executive Bruce S. Gordon, named this month to be the new president of the NAACP.

“The material witness law has been twisted beyond recognition.”

– From a report released this week by the American Civil Liberties Union and Human Rights Watch, claiming the U.S. Justice Department has abused the rights of at least 70 Muslim men, using material witness warrants to keep them in indefinite detention after 9-11.

“The way of opposition to communism is not to imitate its dictatorship, but to enlarge individual human freedom – in our own countries and all over the globe.”

– Sen. Robert F. Kennedy, in an address at the University of Capetown, South Africa, on June 6, 1966.

“This nation will not wait to be attacked again. We will defend our freedom. We will take the fight to the enemy.”

– President George W. Bush, reminding a military audience at Ft. Bragg, N.C., of the stand he took following the Sept. 11, 2001, attack by terrorists on the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon in Washington, D.C.

“How is some local paper in a rural state going to find the courage to stand up to this kind of thing if Time doesn’t have the courage?”

– Communications professor Paul Levinson of Fordham University, reacting to this week’s news that Time magazine would turn reporter Matt Cooper’s notes over to a federal judge to keep Cooper from going to jail on a contempt of court charge.

“A free press can of course be good or bad, but most certainly without freedom it will never be anything but bad.”

– French author Albert Camus.

“Freedom is always a call to possibility that demands an overcoming of doubt.”

– Hoover Institution fellow Shelby Steele, in his book, “The Content of Our Character.”

“They valued liberty both as an end and as a means. They believed liberty to be the secret of happiness and courage to be the secret of liberty.”

– Supreme Court Justice Louis D. Brandeis, referring to the Founding Fathers in a 1927 opinion, Whitney v. California.

“Man’s capacity for justice makes democracy possible; but man’s inclination to injustice makes democracy necessary.”

– Theologian Reinhold Niebuhr in his 1953 work, “The Children of Light and the Children of Darkness.”

“While we do all have personal freedoms in this country, laws are passed sometimes to protect us from ourselves.”

– Peggy Hodges of the Spokane County Traffic Safety Commission, commenting this week after the Spokane Valley City Council rejected a proposal to require young bicyclists to wear helmets.

“Once a government is committed to the principle of silencing the voice of opposition, it has only one way to go, and that is down the path of increasingly repressive measures, until it becomes a source of terror to all its citizens and creates a country where everyone lives in fear.”

– President Harry S. Truman, speaking in 1950.

“We are not a free people because we are democratic. We are a democratic people because we were born free. Out of freedom, democracy develops naturally. Out of democracy, and in its name, anything may develop, even despotism.”

– Journalist and political commentator Dorothy Thompson, in a 1938 address at the New York Herald Tribune Forum.

“Liberty is the one thing no man can have unless he grants it to others.”

– Anthropologist Ruth Benedict, in a 1942 article in “Atlantic Monthly” magazine.

“If the flag needs protection at all, it needs protection from members of Congress who value the symbol more than the freedoms that the flag represents.”

– U.S. Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., on House approval of a proposed constitutional amendment to permit outlawing flag desecration.

“The elasticity of democracy is its strength – like the web of a spider, which bends but holds.”

– Essayist and noted literary stylist E.B. White in an article for The New Yorker in 1949.

“Freedom is a strong seed

Planted in a great need.

I live here, too.

I want freedom just as you.”

– African-American poet Langston Hughes in “Democracy.”

“(America’s) glory is not dominion, but liberty.”

– Secretary of State John Quincy Adams, in a speech to the U.S. House of Representatives on July 4, 1821.

“Happy Independence Day.”

– Spokesman-Review editorial board members Stacey Cowles, Steven A. Smith, Doug Floyd, Gary Crooks, D.F. Oliveria and Rebecca Nappi.