American Flag Quotes: 15 Lines Checked Against the Source

Every June the same request lands in our inbox. Someone planning a Flag Day program wants American flag quotes for the handout. When we went back to the quote list on our old blog, we found a problem. A few lines had no source we could find, and one of the most shared "Woodrow Wilson" quotes is a paraphrase of what he said. So we rebuilt the list from scratch. Every quote below links to a primary text we read ourselves.

TL;DR: The most quotable lines about the American flag come from Francis Scott Key (1814), Henry Ward Beecher (1861), Franklin K. Lane (1914), Woodrow Wilson (1915 and 1917), Ronald Reagan (1981), and three Supreme Court cases. We give the exact wording and where to read it, then name the popular American flag quotes we left out.

Quotes About the American Flag From the Founding Era

We start where the flag starts. The resolution Congress passed on June 14, 1777 is the line every Flag Day program quotes, and it is the reason we celebrate on that date (>Library of Congress, Today in History: June 14).

"Resolved, That the flag of the thirteen United States be thirteen stripes, alternate red and white; that the union be thirteen stars, white in a blue field, representing a new constellation." - Continental Congress, June 14, 1777

"O say does that star-spangled banner yet wave / O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave?" - Francis Scott Key, 1814

Key wrote those lines after watching the garrison flag go up over Fort McHenry on the morning of September 14, 1814. That flag had 15 stars and 15 stripes, and it now hangs at the Smithsonian (>Smithsonian, Facts about the Star-Spangled Banner). We like pairing these two quotes on a program card.

One is a rule. The other is a question.

Civil War Era Flag Quotes

The flag became personal during the Civil War, and the writing from those years shows it. Henry Ward Beecher, the Brooklyn preacher, gave an address on the flag in 1861 that people still borrow from. His sentence about the "thoughtful mind" shows up in versions with small wording differences. We use the wording President Reagan quoted in his 1981 Flag Day proclamation, which matches the text Beecher's collected addresses printed (>Reagan Library, Proclamation 4846). The second Beecher line comes from the same address (>What So Proudly We Hail, Beecher's Address to the Brooklyn 14th Regiment).

"A thoughtful mind, when it sees a nation's flag, sees not the flag only, but the nation itself; and whatever may be its symbols, its insignia, he reads chiefly in the flag the government, the principles, the truths, the history which belongs to the nation that sets it forth." - Henry Ward Beecher, 1861

"It is not a painted rag. It is a whole national history. It is the Constitution. It is the government." - Henry Ward Beecher, 1861

"One flag, one land, one heart, one hand, / One Nation, evermore!" - Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr., "Voyage of the Good Ship Union," 1862

The Holmes couplet closes a poem he published in The Atlantic in March 1862 (>The Atlantic archive). We see it on banners for a simple reason: it fits.

Flag Day Speeches: Lane and Wilson

Our favorite piece of flag writing is a speech most people have never heard of. On Flag Day in 1914, Interior Secretary Franklin K. Lane told his department's employees a story about the flag greeting him on his way into work and calling him "Mr. Flag Maker." Lane protests that he is only a government clerk. The flag answers with a list of small jobs: a homestead claim untangled in Idaho, a mine made safer in Illinois, a boy in Georgia chasing a Corn Club prize. Then it tells him the work is what makes the flag. We read the full text in a 1918 collection of patriotic pieces (>Wikisource, Makers of the Flag). It takes three minutes. It reads well aloud. If you only have room for two lines, use these.

"I am not the flag; not at all. I am but its shadow." - Franklin K. Lane, 1914

"I am whatever you make me, nothing more." - Franklin K. Lane, 1914

Now the Wilson problem. The line that circulates is "The things that the flag stands for were created by the experiences of a great people. Everything that it stands for was written by their lives." We searched for it in Wilson's 1915 Flag Day address and it is not there in that form. Here is what the transcript says (>American Presidency Project, Address at Flag Day Exercises of the Treasury Department):

"It has been created by the experience of a great people, and nothing is written upon it that has not been written by their life. It is the embodiment, not of a sentiment, but of a history." - Woodrow Wilson, June 14, 1915

"This flag which we honor and under which we serve is the emblem of our unity, our power, our thought and purpose as a nation. It has no other character than that which we give it from generation to generation." - Woodrow Wilson, June 14, 1917

We took the 1917 text from a 1918 printing of the speech (>Wikisource, President Wilson's Flag Day Address). The country had entered World War I that April.

Presidential Proclamations

Presidents issue a Flag Day proclamation every year. Reagan's first one has the line we use most.

"When we honor our flag we honor what we stand for as a Nation, freedom, equality, justice, and hope." - Ronald Reagan, Proclamation 4846, 1981

(The original prints a double hyphen before "freedom." We set it as a comma here.)

What the Supreme Court Has Said About the Flag

Some of the sharpest writing we found sits in court opinions.

We include both sides of Texas v. Johnson (1989), the flag burning case, because the dissent is as quotable as the majority (>Cornell LII, Texas v. Johnson, 491 U.S. 397). The 1943 Barnette case, about schoolchildren and the flag salute, gave us the line about symbols that we think explains why people care so much about a piece of cloth (>Cornell LII, West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette, 319 U.S. 624).

"Symbolism is a primitive but effective way of communicating ideas. The use of an emblem or flag to symbolize some system, idea, institution, or personality, is a short cut from mind to mind." - Justice Robert H. Jackson, West Virginia v. Barnette, 1943

"To believe that patriotism will not flourish if patriotic ceremonies are voluntary and spontaneous instead of a compulsory routine is to make an unflattering estimate of the appeal of our institutions to free minds." - Justice Robert H. Jackson, 1943

"We can imagine no more appropriate response to burning a flag than waving one's own." - Justice William J. Brennan Jr., Texas v. Johnson, 1989

"It is poignant but fundamental that the flag protects those who hold it in contempt." - Justice Anthony Kennedy, concurring, 1989

"Millions and millions of Americans regard it with an almost mystical reverence regardless of what sort of social, political, or philosophical beliefs they may have." - Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, dissenting, 1989

Popular American Flag Quotes We Left Out

The poem fragment "There are many flags in many lands" ran on our old page as "Unknown." It is a children's song, and we could not pin down an author or a date, so it stays off. We also cut a line credited to Howard Schnauber and one credited to Robert C. Winthrop, because we could not find either in a dated, published source. The internet is full of "Our flag does not fly because the wind moves it" with no name attached. Same problem. If you want one of these on a card, we would mark it "attributed" and move on.

We will add a line back the day someone shows us where it was first printed.

Send us the source and we will check it.

Putting a Quote to Use on Flag Day

We see these quotes on programs and gift notes most often. For a gift note, Lane's "I am whatever you make me" is short and personal. For a ceremony, the 1777 resolution and Key's two lines read well back to back. If the occasion is November 11, our Veterans Day flag etiquette guide covers how to fly the flag that day, and our American flag gift guide for veterans helps you pick one that lasts.

Need the flag itself? Every flag we sell is made in the USA. The Durable Patriot is 100% nylon with embroidered stars and sewn stripes. The Everlast American Pride is 100% spun polyester, our pick for windy yards. Browse both in our American flags collection.

American Flag Quotes: Questions We Get

What is the most famous quote about the American flag?

Francis Scott Key's lines from 1814, "O say does that star-spangled banner yet wave / O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave?", are the most widely known because they became the national anthem. Congress made the song official in 1931. For a spoken quote, Beecher's 1861 line about the "thoughtful mind" is the one we see most.

Who said "I am whatever you make me, nothing more"?

Franklin K. Lane, Secretary of the Interior under Woodrow Wilson, in his Flag Day talk of 1914, later printed as "Makers of the Flag." In the speech the flag itself is speaking. The full text runs a few minutes and works well read aloud at a school or a post meeting.

Did Woodrow Wilson say the flag is "the embodiment, not of sentiment, but of history"?

Close, but the common version is a paraphrase. His Flag Day address of June 14, 1915 says: "It is the embodiment, not of a sentiment, but of a history." The surrounding sentences are worded differently from the version on most quote sites. We quote the transcript from the American Presidency Project above.

What is a good short American flag quote for a card?

For a short one, we like Lane's "I am whatever you make me, nothing more" or Holmes's "One flag, one land, one heart, one hand, One Nation, evermore!" Both fit on a gift tag. For a veteran, Wilson's 1917 line about "the emblem of our unity" reads well and is easy to source if anyone asks.

What does the 1777 Flag Resolution say?

It says the flag of the thirteen United States shall be thirteen stripes, alternate red and white, and that the union shall be thirteen stars, white in a blue field, "representing a new constellation." Congress passed it on June 14, 1777, which is why Flag Day falls on June 14.

Are flag quotes from Supreme Court cases free to use?

Yes. Court opinions are public domain in the United States, so you can print lines from Texas v. Johnson or West Virginia v. Barnette on a program without asking permission. We would still name the justice and the case. It helps readers find the full opinion and shows the quote is real.

Keep reading: From 13 Stripes to 50 Stars: The History of the American Flag and Flagpole Meaning: What a Flagpole Is, How It Works, and Why It Matters.