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:
Humanity has gained its suit; Liberty will nevermore be without an asylum.
A man may publish anything which twelve of his countrymen think not blamable.
Liberty (or freedom) is the absence of coercion by other human beings.
The Judge is intrusted with the liberties of the people, and his saying is the Law.
Nationalism does not provide a single way of talking about the world.
Patriotism always exists in the greatest degree in rude nations, and in an early period of society.
Everything that is really great and inspiring is created by the individual who can labor in freedom.
No people are truly free until they can determine their own destiny.