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.

Random quote on Independence Day

Most quoted on independence day:

If there is a bedrock principle of the First Amendment, it is that the government may not prohibit the expression of an idea simply because society finds the idea itself offensive or disagreeable.

William J. Brennan Jr.

If the true spark of religious and civil liberty be kindled, it will burn.

Daniel Webster Address on Laying the Cornerstone of the Bunker Hill Monument (1825)

The most certain test by which we judge whether a country is really free is the amount of security enjoyed by minorities.

John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton The History of Freedom in Antiquity (1877)

Independence, the freedom of a self-governing nation, is in my estimation the highest political good, for which any disadvantage, if need be, and any sacrifice are a cheap price. It is worth living for; it is worth fighting for; and it is worth dying for.

Enoch Powell

The last end that can happen to any man, never comes too soon, if he falls in support of the law and liberty of his country: for liberty is synonymous to law and government.

William Murray, 1st Earl of Mansfield Rex v. Wilkes (1769)