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:
93 percent of Chinese... value security over freedom, as compared to... 28 percent of Americans.
I have not come here with reference to any flag but that of freedom.
Power in defense of freedom is greater than power in behalf of tyranny and oppression.
Freedom succumbs to dizziness. Further than this, psychology cannot and will not go.
Unless a man has talents to make something of himself, freedom is an irksome burden.