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Pledge of Allegiance — news, coverage & facts — IJR

Notable quotes

“I pledge allegiance to my Flag and the Republic for which it stands: one Nation indivisible, with Liberty and Justice for all.”
— Original language of the pledge as first used at the dedication of the World's Fair Grounds in Chicago, Illinois (October 21, 1892), the four hundredth anniversary of the Christopher Columbus' arrival in the Americas and the first celebration of Columbus Day, which had been proclaimed by the U.S. president and made a national holiday by the U.S. Congress; published in The Youth's Companion (September 8, 1892), p. 446. No individual author was named; the program bore the names of the executive committee, including the chairman, Francis Bellamy. A story in The Youth's Companion (December 20, 1917, p. 722), credits the authorship of the pledge to James B. Upham with the assistance of the 1892 committee, but in 1939 a scholarly committee of the United States Flag Association studied the question of authorship and "decided that to Francis Bellamy unquestionably belongs the honor and distinction of being the author of the original Pledge to the Flag". Margarette S. Miller, I Pledge Allegiance (1946), p. 162–69. Also, Pledge of Allegiance to the Flag (1955), p. 4, House Doc. 84–225. The wording of the 1892 pledge was originally the twenty-two words above, but the word "to" preceding "the Republic" was added immediately after the first celebration. The First National Flag Conference, 1923, altered the wording from "my Flag" to "the Flag of the United States," and the following year the Second National Flag Conference added "of America" to that phrase.—Miller, op. cit., p. 156–58. Public Law 79–287, December 28, 1945, made this officially the Pledge of Allegiance to the Flag. Public Law 83–396, signed on Flag Day, June 14, 1954, added the phrase "under God".
“I pledge allegiance to the Flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands, one Nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.”
— Pledge of allegiance to the flag, 36 United States Code 172 (1982 ed.).
“But the public display of religion is not God. We do not put God in our nation's life by placing the Ten Commandments in courthouses, nor do we evict God by removing the Ten Commandments from public property. God is not portable. Bland prayers, offered as noncontroversial formalities after the National Anthem and the Pledge of Allegiance do little to honor God.”
— John Danforth, Faith and Politics (2006), p. 66.
“We think the action of the local authorities in compelling the flag salute and pledge transcends constitutional limitations on their power and invades the sphere of intellect and spirit which it is the purpose of the First Amendment to our Constitution to reserve from all official control.”
— Robert H. Jackson, West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette, 319 U.S. 624, 642 (1943).

Quotes via Wikiquote (CC BY-SA), each with its original source.