Statue of Liberty

Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

Thou warden of the western gate, above Manhattan Bay,
The fogs of doubt that hid thy face are driven clean away:
Thine eyes at last look far and clear, thou liftest high thy hand
To spread the light of liberty world-wide for every land.

The Statue of Liberty (Liberty Enlightening the World; French: La Liberté éclairant le monde) is a colossal neoclassical sculpture on Liberty Island in the middle of New York Harbor, in Manhattan, New York City. The statue, designed by Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi and dedicated on October 28, 1886, was a gift to the United States from the people of France. The statue is of a robed female figure representing Libertas, the Roman goddess of freedom, who bears a torch and a tabula ansata (a tablet evoking the law) upon which is inscribed the date of the American Declaration of Independence, July 4, 1776. A broken chain lies at her feet. The statue is an icon of freedom and of the United States: a welcoming signal to immigrants arriving from abroad.

Quotes

• On the Statue of Liberty it says, 'Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to be free.' In the Declaration of Independence, it is written, 'All men are created equal and endowed with certain inalienable rights.' So for Mr. Briggs and Mrs. Bryant, and all the bigots out there, no matter how hard you try, you can never erase those words from the Declaration of Independence! No matter how hard you try, you can never chip those words from the base of the Statue of Liberty! That is where America is! Love it or leave it!
  • Dustin Lance Black, Milk (2008 film); spoken by Sean Penn as Harvey Milk, a politician and activist who became the first openly gay man elected to major public office in the United States.

• We are not here today to bow before the representation of a fierce warlike god, filled with wrath and vengeance, but we joyously contemplate instead our own deity keeping watch and ward before the open gates of America and greater than all that have been celebrated in ancient song. Instead of grasping in her hand thunderbolts of terror and of death, she holds aloft the light which illumines the way to man's enfranchisement. We will not forget that Liberty has here made her home, nor shall her chosen altar be neglected. Willing votaries will constantly keep alive its fires and these shall gleam upon the shores of our sister Republic thence, and joined with answering rays a stream of light shall pierce the darkness of ignorance and man's oppression, until Liberty enlightens the world.
  • Grover Cleveland, Dedication speech for the Statue of Liberty (28 October 1886).

• Since September 11, 2001, I have often thought that perhaps it was fortunate for the world that the attackers targeted the World Trade Center instead of the Statue of Liberty, for if they had destroyed our sacred symbol of democracy I fear we as Americans would have been unable to keep ourselves from indulging in paroxysms of revenge of a sort the world has never seen before. If that had happened, it would have befouled the meaning of the Statue of Liberty beyond any hope of subsequent redemption -- if there were any people left to care. I have learned from my students that this upsetting thought of mine is subject to several unfortunate misconstruals, so let me expand on it to ward them off. The killing of thousands of innocents in the World Trade Center was a heinous crime, much more evil than the destruction of the Statue of Liberty would have been. And, yes, the World Trade Center was a much more appropriate symbol of al Qaeda's wrath than the Statue of Liberty would have been, but for that very reason it didn't mean as much, as a symbol, to us. It was Mammon and Plutocrats and Globalization, not Lady Liberty.
  • Daniel Dennett, Breaking the Spell (2006).

• Thou warden of the western gate, above Manhattan Bay,
  The fogs of doubt that hid thy face are driven clean away:
  Thine eyes at last look far and clear, thou liftest high thy hand
  To spread the light of liberty world-wide for every land.
  • Henry van Dyke, Liberty Enlightening the World (1917).

• Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
  With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
  Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
  A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
  Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
  Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
  world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
  The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
  "Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she
  With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,
  Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
  The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
  Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
  I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"
  • Emma Lazarus, "The New Colossus", Emma Lazarus, Selection from Her Poetry and Prose (1944), ed. Morris U. Schappes, p. 40–41. Congress had allocated money to erect Frédéric Bartholdi's Statue of Liberty Enlightening the World, but had provided no money for a pedestal. A citizens committee invited famous authors to write appropriate words and donate their manuscripts for auction. Lazarus wrote this sonnet (1883), which can be found on a plaque in the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty. The last four and a half lines are also engraved on the wall of the reception hall of John F. Kennedy International Airport, New York City. Dan Vogel, Emma Lazarus (1980), p. 157, 159.

• You have set up in New York Harbor a monstrous idol which you call Liberty. The only thing that remains to complete that monument is to put on its pedestal the inscription written by Dante on the gate of hell: "All hope abandon ye who enter here".
  • George Bernard Shaw, The Future of Political Science in America, p. 7–8 (1933). This address was given at the Metropolitan Opera House, New York City, April 11, 1933, before a special meeting of the Academy of Political Science held in honor of Shaw's first visit to America.

• The Statue of Liberty means everything. We take it for granted today. We take it for granted. Remember the Statue of Liberty stands for what America is. We as Democrats have to remind ourselves and remind the country the great principles we stand for. This is a place of protection. This is not a country of bullies. We are not an empire. We are the light. We are the Statue of Liberty.
  • Jerry Springer, speech given January 2003, reported in This American Life, Ep. 258, 01/30/04, Leaving the Fold; Act One.

• The view... from my apartment... was the World Trade Center... And now it's gone. And they attacked it. This symbol of... of American ingenuity and strength... and labor and imagination and commerce and it's gone. But you know what the view is now? The Statue of Liberty. The view from the south of Manhattan is the Statue of Liberty. You can’t beat that.
  • Jon Stewart, Monologue on September 20, 2001. At the beginning of the first episode of The Daily Show to air after September 11th, 2001, Stewart gave a personal monologue about the impact of the attacks on himself and the show.
    View video of the monologue at The Daily Show's official website (requires Marcromedia Flash). Read a fan's transcript.

External links

• Statue of Liberty National Monument