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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:

You always know the mark of a coward. A coward hides behind freedom. A brave person stands in front of freedom and defends it for others.

Henry Rollins Talk is Cheap Volume 1 (1998)

Aristocrats need not be rich, but they must be free, and in the modern world freedom grows rarer the more we prate about it.

Robertson Davies Osbert Sitwell (1945)

The language of science—and especially of a science of man—is, necessarily, anti-individualistic, and hence a threat to human freedom and dignity.

Thomas Szasz Anti-Freud (1990)

The less of one's life one must exchange for money, the more freedom one may enjoy.

Gerry Spence Give Me Liberty! (1998)

Of what use is freedom of speech to those who fear to offend?

Roger Ebert

Only in an atmosphere of freedom can the creative genius of the human spirit find full expression.

Walter Reuther Address before the Indian Council on World Affairs (1956)

This is our goal—a world of peace, freedom, and social justice for all people everywhere.

Walter Reuther Address before the Berlin Freedom Rally (1959)

The suppression of liberty is always likely to be irrational.

John Rawls A Theory of Justice (1971)

Everyone suddenly burst out singing;
And I was filled with such delight
As prisoned birds must find in freedom.

Siegfried Sassoon Everyone Sang (1919)

We do not protect freedom in order to indulge error. We protect freedom in order to discover truth.

Henry Steele Commager Freedom, Loyalty, Dissent (1954)

We have depended on government for so much for so long that we as people have become less vigilant of our liberties.

Ron Paul

A person is a fool to become a writer. His only compensation is absolute freedom. He has no master except his own soul and that, I am sure, is why he does it.

Roald Dahl

Without freedom to blame, no praise is flattering, and none but little men are afraid of little writings.

Pierre Beaumarchais The Marriage of Figaro (1778)

That is the true experience of freedom: having the most important thing in the world without owning it.

Paulo Coelho Eleven Minutes (2003)

You long for freedom? You fools! If you took might, freedom would come of itself.

Max Stirner The Ego and Its Own / The Unique and Its Property (1845)

There have always been those who, though they see tragedy as the outcome of freedom, will nevertheless judge that tragedy is not too high a price to pay.

Kenneth Rexroth Classics Revisited (1968)

The freedom of the press is one of the great bulwarks of liberty, and can never be restrained but by despotic governments.

George Mason Virginia Declaration of Rights (1776)

It is harder to preserve than to obtain liberty.

John C. Calhoun

Thank God for the mind. It's the only place where we have freedom of speech.

Charles Reis Felix Crossing the Sauer: a memoir of World War II (2002)

The liberties of none are safe unless the liberties of all are protected.

William O. Douglas A Living Bill of Rights (1961)

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