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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:

Nationalism is about putting the (ethno-)nation above liberal-democratic and leftist values alike. Once one takes that step, one is not separated from other nationalists by anything irreducible.

Brian Reynolds Myers South Korea’s Nationalist-Left Front (2019)

I wanted to be free. I wanted to express desires on my own, to shape my own little life.

Alexandra Kollontai The Autobiography of a Sexually Emancipated Communist Woman (1926)

The Pale Blue Dot (photograph) is a silent rebuke to the fundamentalist, the nationalist, the militarist, the polluter-to anyone who does not put above all other things the protection of our little planet and the life that it sustains in the vast cold darkness.

Ann Druyan Cosmos: Possible Worlds (2020)

It is a great folly to lose the inner man in order to gain the outer, that is, to give up the whole or the greater part of one’s quiet, leisure, and independence for splendour, rank, pomp, titles and honours.

Arthur Schopenhauer

I think the conviction of appellant or anyone else for exhibiting a motion picture abridges freedom of the press as safeguarded by the First Amendment, which is made obligatory on the States by the Fourteenth.

Hugo Black

If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. Then ye will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.

Jesus

Sound the loud timbrel o'er Egypt's dark sea!
Jehovah hath triumphed—his people are free.

Lord Byron

Who would not be that youth? What pity is it
That we can die but once to save our country!

Joseph Addison

The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum - even encourage the more critical and dissident views. That gives people the sense that there's free thinking going on, while all the time the presuppositions of the system are being reinforced by the limits put on the range of the debate.

Noam Chomsky The Common Good (1998)

The difference between patriotism and nationalism is that the patriot is proud of his country for what it does, and the nationalist is proud of his country no matter what it does; the first attitude creates a feeling of responsibility, but the second a feeling of blind arrogance that leads to war.

Sydney J. Harris Strictly Personal (1953)

I would defend the freedom of speech. And why? Because no attack can be answered by force, no argument can be refuted by a blow, or by imprisonment, or by fine. You may imprison the man, but the argument is free; you may fell the man to the earth, but the statement stands.

Robert G. Ingersoll The trial of Charles B. Reynolds for blasphemy (1887)

There is no easy walk to freedom anywhere, and many of us will have to pass through the valley of the shadow of death again and again before we reach the mountaintop of our desires.

Nelson Mandela Long Walk to Freedom (1995)

It would indeed be ironic if, in the name of national defense, we would sanction the subversion of one of those liberties — the freedom of association — which make the defense of our nation worthwhile.

Earl Warren United States v. Robel (1967)

Again to the battle, Achaians!
Our hearts bid the tyrants defiance!
Our land, the first garden of Liberty's tree,
It has been, and shall yet be, the land of the free.

Thomas Campbell Theodric: A Domestic Tale; and Other Poems (1825)

After all, if freedom of speech means anything, it means a willingness to stand and let people say things with which we disagree, and which do weary us considerably.

Zechariah Chafee

Hail! Independence, hail! Heaven's next best gift,
To that of life and an immortal soul!

James Thomson

To will oneself free is also to will others free.

Simone de Beauvoir

The first freedom is freedom from sin.

Martin Luther Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895)

The only freedom which deserves the name, is that of pursuing our own good in our own way, so long as we do not attempt to deprive others of theirs, or impede their efforts to obtain it.

John Stuart Mill On Liberty (1859)

I was born an American; I live an American; I shall die an American!

Daniel Webster

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