„Wir müssen, in der Tat, alle zusammenhängen – oder wir werden, ganz gewiss, alle einzeln hängen.“

Original

We must, indeed, all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately.

Statement at the signing of the Declaration of Independence (1776-07-04), quoted as an anecdote in The Works of Benjamin Franklin by Jared Sparks (1840). However, this had earlier been attributed to Richard Penn in Memoirs of a Life, Chiefly Passed in Pennsylvania, Within the Last Sixty Years (1811, p. 116 http://books.google.com/books?id=TwYFAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA116&vq=%22hang+together%22). In 1801, "If we don't hang together, by Heavens we shall hang separately" appears in the English play Life by Frederick Reynolds (Life, Frederick Reynolds, in a collection by Mrs Inchbald, 1811, Google Books http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=egsLAQAAIAAJ&pg=PA176 first published in 1801 http://www.lib.muohio.edu/multifacet/record/mu3ugb2568779), and the remark was later attributed to 'An American General' by Reynolds in his 1826 memoir p.358 http://books.google.com/books?id=_MQEAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA358&dq=general's. A comparable pun on "hang alone … hang together" appears in Dryden's 1717 The Spanish Fryar Google Books http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=PgoOAAAAQAAJ&pg=PT19. The pun also appears in an April 14, 1776 letter from Carter Braxton to Landon Carter, Letters of Members of the Continental Congress, Vol.1 (1921) http://books.google.com/books?id=7TMSAAAAYAAJ, p.421, as "a true saying of a Wit — We must hang together or separately."
Attributed