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:
Choosing the freedom to be uninteresting never quite worked for me.
When you are fighting for freedom and your soul, what won’t you do?
Liberty is the most jealous and exacting mistress that can beguile the brain and soul of man.
Of freedom and of life he only is deserving
Who every day must conquer them anew.
For every king, every despot is the sworn foe of freedom and of law.
Whether or not we can get together, remember well that art “lives” where absolute freedom is.
A man is either free or he is not. There cannot be any apprenticeship for freedom.