Liberty is so much latitude as the powerful choose to accord to the weak.
Independence Day Quotes
Despite the name, this is not a page about the American Fourth of July. It is built from the freedom and patriotism pages, and the writers who turn up come from all over: the Puerto Rican poet Julia de Burgos, the Italian anarchist Bruno Filippi, Shakespeare, Anna Quindlen. De Burgos has a line about an invaded nation where today’s battlefield is independence.
A few entries are there because of a keyword, not a mood. Cervantes’s remark about not thrusting his nose into other men’s porridge (Don Quixote, 1605) is about minding your own business. If you want something for a speech, sort by source grade and skip the oddities.
Most quoted on independence day:
The great aim of the struggle for liberty has been equality before the law.
Liberty is too priceless to be forfeited through the zeal of an administrative agent.
What matters for individual liberty is not the source of law but its extent.
America is not a democracy. We are not fighting for democracy. We fight for liberty.
Traditional nationalism cannot survive the fissioning of the atom. One world or none.