On Thanksgiving Day we acknowledge our dependence.

Bryan’s sentence frames Thanksgiving not merely as a celebration of abundance but as a ritual of humility. “Dependence” points beyond self-reliance—an acknowledgment that prosperity, safety, and national well-being are not wholly earned or controlled by individuals or even by the nation. In Bryan’s moral and religious idiom, the word typically implies dependence on Providence (and, by extension, on one another), making gratitude inseparable from restraint and responsibility. The line also subtly critiques pride: a people who publicly confess dependence are less likely to treat success as entitlement. As a civic aphorism, it casts Thanksgiving as a corrective to individualism and a reminder of shared vulnerability.