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:
The yearning for freedom cannot be contained by walls for long.
Arbitrary power is most easily established on the ruins of liberty abused to licentiousness.
Greeks, God has signed our Liberty and will not go back on his promise.
Education is training in wisdom and virtue, and the exercise of these is freedom.
Initiative means freedom to act, but it does not mean freedom to act in an offhand or casual manner.
Ukraine is not Russia. Too many Ukrainians have tasted too much freedom for too long.
There’s nothing like a little slavery to make a man appreciate even a modest portion of freedom.