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:
I believe we are on an irreversible trend towards more freedom and democracy, but that could change.
The truth is, all might be free if they valued freedom, and defended it as they ought.
A day, an hour, of virtuous liberty
Is worth a whole eternity in bondage.
To know how to free oneself is nothing; the arduous thing is to know what to do with one's freedom.
Freedom of Nature is, to be under no other restraint but the Law of Nature.
The love of liberty is the love of others; the love of power is the love of ourselves.
To my mind the single essential element on which all discoveries will be dependent is human freedom.