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:
Freedom of the press is guaranteed only to those who own one.
He who stifles free discussion, secretly doubts whether what he professes to believe is really true.
Liberty is an empty sound as long as you are kept in bondage economically.
What do we mean when we say that first of all we seek liberty?
Our liberty depends on the freedom of the press, and that cannot be limited without being lost.
No man's life, liberty or property are safe while the legislature is in session.
The leaders and scholars of Jesus’ time had first enslaved themselves to the law.
The price of freedom is to decide moral and political issues.
Power needs to be forever linked to freedom; freedom needs to be the limit placed on power.