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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:

The essence of the modern state is the union of the universal with the full freedom of the particular, and with the welfare of individuals.

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel Elements of the Philosophy of Right (1820)

The one impulse in man which cannot be erased is his impulse toward freedom, his impulse toward sanity, toward higher levels of attainment in all of his endeavors.

L. Ron Hubbard Dianetics 55! (1954)

A patriot is someone who cares what happens in their country.

Billy Bragg

Religion is usually nothing but a supplement to or even a substitute for education, and nothing is religious in the strict sense which is not a product of freedom.

Friedrich Schlegel Athenäum (1798)

The thing we have to develop in the world today is the world citizen and bring to an end this crude nationalism which has been the source of so much world hate.

Alice Bailey The Unfinished Autobiography (1951)

Objectivity may also be defined as freedom: the objective individual is bound by no commitments which could prejudice his perception, understanding, and evaluation of the given.

Georg Simmel The Stranger (1908)

The Egyptian Army is a great patriotic army, The Egyptian Army is a very noble and tough army, and it's toughness comes from it's nobility.

Abdel Fattah el-Sisi

“Do you feel free?”
“I feel like I’ve lost too much.”
“Freedom can feel that way.”

Jaroslav Kalfař Spaceman of Bohemia (2017)

Freedom! That belabored word! It is a big, empty word, and yet, when some experience reminds us what freedom is, how clear and particular its meaning becomes, how unspeakably sweet, and full!

Michael Shea Nifft the Lean (1982)

Morale was deteriorating and it was all Yossarian's fault. The country was in peril; he was jeopardizing his traditional rights of freedom and independence by daring to exercise them.

Joseph Heller Catch-22 (1961)

The abolition of the evil is not impossible; it ought never therefore to be despaired of. Every plan should be adopted, every experiment tried, which may do something towards the ultimate object.

Thomas Jefferson Letter to Frances Wright (1825)

It's not our site's goal to be a completely free-speech platform. We want to be a safe platform and we want to be a platform that also protects privacy at the same time.

Ellen Pao

Freedom must be gained step by step, slowly. Freedom is a food which must be carefully administered when people are too hungry for it.

Lech Wałęsa

We start from different ideological positions. For you, to be a Communist or a Socialist is to be totalitarian; for me no.… On the contrary, I think Socialism frees man.

Salvador Allende

The way towards 'wisdom' or towards 'freedom' is the way towards your inner being. This is the simplest definition of metaphysics.

Mircea Eliade The Little Book of Romanian Wisdom (2011)

Faith is that which dispels desire,
Devotion is that which generates knowledge.
And Vedas say that knowledge is that which fashions freedom.

Tulsidas

Our freedom is hemmed in on every side. We must be grateful for what remains.

Charles Rosen

There are various political views in Taiwan. People can hold different political views, (because) the most valuable elements of Taiwanese values are democracy, freedom, diversity and openness.

Ko Wen-je Ko Wen-je (2019)

When a whole nation is roaring Patriotism at the top of its voice, I am fain to explore the cleanness of its hands and purity of its heart.

Ralph Waldo Emerson Journals (1822)

But you must remember, my fellow-citizens, that eternal vigilance by the people is the price of liberty, and that you must pay the price if you wish to secure the blessing.

Andrew Jackson

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