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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:

"In my opinion, patriotism is liberty."

José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero

There can be no free speech in a mob: free speech is one thing a mob can't stand.

Northrop Frye The Educated Imagination (1963)

Freedom is not living at the mercy of instinct.

Camillo Ruini

Gas might be expensive, but freedom is priceless.

Kaja Kallas

The road to freedom is full of thorns and fire, yet happy is he who follows it!

Aminu Kano

As long as there is thought, there is dignity, and as long as there is the courage to be concerned, there is freedom.

Paolo Crepet

Freedom means doing different things together, the opposite of what happens in a hypermarket.

Paolo Crepet

We see now that infringement of freedom is necessary with regard to the opponents of the revolution. At a time of revolution we cannot allow freedom for the enemies of the people and of the revolution. That is a surely clear, irrefutable conclusion.

Nikolai Bukharin Programme of the World Revolution (1918)

Individual liberty is individual power, and as the power of a community is a mass compounded of individual powers, the nation which enjoys the most freedom must necessarily be in proportion to its numbers the most powerful nation.

John Quincy Adams

Freedom can run a monetary system as superbly as it runs the rest of the economy. Contrary to many writers, there is nothing special about money that requires extensive governmental dictation.

Murray Rothbard What Has Government Done to Our Money? (1980)

There is more than one kind of freedom, said Aunt Lydia. Freedom to and freedom from. In the days of anarchy, it was freedom to. Now you are being given freedom from. Don't underrate it.

Margaret Atwood The Handmaid’s Tale (1985)

I joined this party because I believe in freedom. We are the only party believing that if you give people freedom and responsibility, they will grow stronger and society will grow stronger.

David Cameron

For our country to be safe from terrorists we must stabilize Iraq and show that it can be done and take out these terrorist organizations who would harm Americans. Our freedom is at stake here.

Kay Bailey Hutchison

All of us are infected today with an extraordinary egoism. And that is not freedom; freedom means learning to demand only of oneself, not of life and others, and knowing how to give: sacrifice in the name of love.

Andrei Tarkovsky Sculpting in Time (1986)

Freedom is a God-given right. This means maximising liberty while minimising harm to others. Owning an AR-15 does no harm to others. Using it to kill people does. So murder is not a right. But property ownership — especially for defense — is.

Raheem Kassam

Today, the most important humanist sect is liberal humanism, which believes that 'humanity' is a quality of individual humans, and that the liberty of individuals is therefore sacrosanct.

Yuval Noah Harari Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind (2011)

And who cannot but remember, That Religion, Liberty and Property were all lost and gone, when the Monarchy was shaken off, and could never be reviv'd till that was restored.

Charles II of England

We are determined that before the sun sets on this terrible struggle, Our Flag will be recognized throughout the World as a symbol of Freedom on the one hand and of overwhelming force on the other.

George C. Marshall

It must cut up Liberty by the root and poison the Fountain of Publick Security; and who that has an English heart can ever be weary of asserting Liberty?

William Pitt, 1st Earl of Chatham

II. Thesis. Freedom, i.e., not the power absolutely to originate, but to pass judgement between two or more possibilities. Antithesis. Determinism.

Bernhard Riemann Gesammelte Mathematische Werke (1876)

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